Just Us and Three Wrong Turns
by Widdrim
Summary: Hela has built a decent life for herself, far from the family she hasn't spoken to in six years. Her dad and stepmom's divorce shouldn't have made a ripple. So how did she end up on a cross-country road trip with a giant dog, two estranged stepbrothers, and a spray-painted Volkswagen? They're going to need a lot more than a bag of powdered donuts and half a tank of gas to get home.
1. The One Where They Get Stranded

Loki pulled his knees up to his chest and held the phone screen closer to his face. The hum of the jet engine rumbled through his noise canceling-headphones, the ones Mom had gotten him for his birthday.

Somewhere behind the frantic zombie fighting of _Gravity Falls,_ the stewardess's voice crackled over the speakers, muted and garbled. He checked that his seatbelt was buckled and turned the volume up two clicks. Even though the plane speakers still came through, the headphones blocked out the endless chatting of the grandmas next to him. It had taken him an hour to detangle himself from their quizzing: where was he coming from? Why was he going to Phoenix? Was he travelling alone? Would his father be there to pick him up? He'd finally just disappeared to the bathroom and came back with his headphones firmly affixed to his head.

He glanced across the aisle. Thor was angrily mashing buttons on his Switch. Loki glanced at the screen and just saw the screen turning crimson and crimson and crimson. What on earth was he playing? Not _The Witcher_ , Mom wouldn't have bought him that. Dad might have though, so who really knew? They'd been shipped off by the lawyers, so who knew anything?

The pressure started building in his ears. Finally. He was ready to get off this plane. Loki whipped out some bubble gum and gave it a couple chews. He could feel the little old ladies looking at him, talking, of course, about him. He turned the volume down.

"How irresponsible. Putting your kids on a plane all by themselves. Divorcees really can't be trusted with kid, you know my cousin Marge? She had three—"

Loki clenched his jaw. He growled, rolled his head towards them, chewed opened mouth, blew a huge, green bubble that obscured their judgy wrinkles, then smacked it, and let it plaster his nose, chin, and lips. They frowned, and he grinned. He was never gonna see them again, and they were annoying. Then he looked back to his phone and started picking the gum from his face as obviously as possible.

Forty minutes later, the plane landed and taxied to the gate. Loki fished his backpack out from under the seat and wiggled it up into his lap, a plastic wolf keychain swinging from the zipper. Thor was barely over five feet tall, so they hadn't put any luggage in the overhead. Loki blew a half-hearted bubble of his now flavorless gum. He definitely still had gum in his nose and no Kleenexes and no place to spit the semi-elastic wad in his cheek.

Across the aisle, Thor shut down his game and dug out his own battered duffle bag that he refused to let Mom replace. Too many sports victories or something.

It was another fifteen minutes before they finally got off the plane and stepped into the bright Terminal B of the Phoenix airport. Loki paused at the end of the jetway. The terminal looked like the forty other airports Loki had been in. Grey and blue carpet with an indistinguishable pattern of splotched and slashes, faux black leather seats with hard, fake cushions, shiny white tile scattered with sparkles reflecting the softened fluorescent lights. People sprinted to meet their connecting flights, running on the crowded people movers or bypassing them to sprint down the carpet walk down the center of the hall.

Someone jostled his shoulder and rushed past into the airport. Loki blinked and looked for Thor, but his brother was already out of the gate and into the main hall. Loki sighed and trotted after the older boy.

Gate changes and final boarding calls announced over the loudspeakers with practiced calm. Dogs in purses, dogs on leashes, small children holding onto strollers, and wheelchaired grandmothers with lavender hair.

The smell of travel—sweaty, harried bodies, fast food, fine dining, alcohol, and disinfectant all swirled together. The only breeze from the moving of lives, back and forth from gate to gate.

They followed the huge blue signs to the baggage claim and watched the conveyor belt circle with all kinds of ugly suitcases—floral, orange, hot pink, evergreen travel trunks. Their silver hard-sided luggage lurched by, and Thor grabbed them both. The weight caught him off guard, and he stumbled along a couple steps before he planted his feet and yanked both off and thumped them on the ground so hard, Loki expected to see his underwear come tumbling out. Luckily, it stayed zipped shut.

They dragged their bags out to the shaded pick-up curb where they were blasted with blisteringly hot air. Loki squinted at the heat mirage simmering on the pavement, spun on his heel, and dragged his suitcase back inside to the air conditioning.

Thor laughed. "Pansy."

Loki put his headphones back on and turned on his music. When Mom kissed them goodbye outside the Minneapolis-St. Paul's security line, she'd said Dad would be here to pick them up. Loki had no idea what Dad was supposed driving, but he figured two mismatched kids loitering just inside the sliding door wouldn't be too hard to spot.

The sliding doors hissed apart, and hot air rushed in. Thor walked inside, dripping sweat. He flipped down his sunglasses, and Loki squinted at him. Why was he putting his shades on inside?

Fifteen minutes passed. Thor finally texted Dad while Loki wandered down to the bathroom. Another hour, and Loki's phone was definitely dying.

"Do you think we have time to find a Starbucks or…"

Thor flipped up his shades. "Yeah. Dad's not texting me back, and I could use a coffee."

Loki pointed up the hall. "I think that's a directory."

"Cool." Thor flipped his shades down and took off with Loki trotting behind and the wheels of their suitcases clattering on the tile. They reached the directory and started up at the black and white map. Thor pointed to the red "You Are Here" dot and blinked. "Uh…"

Loki shot his brother a dry look. "I don't even know which way the Starbucks is."

"I can read a map."

"Cool. Which way?"

Thor dragged his finger down the screen until he found Starbucks and tapped it. A dotted blue line appeared on the map running from "You Are Here" to some random point. Thor traced it and licked his lips, and the wheels were visibly turning until the older boy dropped his hand to his side and took off in one direction that Loki was pretty sure was picked at random, but the Phoenix airport didn't go on forever, and Starbucks were every thirty feet in Minnesota. He had a hundred dollars on his debit card, so as long as he could plug his phone in, he'd be fine, no thanks to the damn lawyers.

They did not find Starbucks, but they did find a Lola's Coffee with three outlets, so Loki ordered an iced caramel macchiato, plugged his phone in, and texted their dad again.

 _At airport. Found coffee shop, have money from Mom._

Thor plugged his own phone in and pulled out his Switch. Loki finished three more episodes of his show and a breakfast sandwich before his phone buzzed with a text from Mom.

 _"_ _Hi. How are you doing?"_

 _Okay. Landed a while ago and waiting for dad._

Loading ellipsis. That wasn't good.

" _How long have you been waiting?"_

 _Idk a couple hours I guess?_

 _"_ _Hours?"_

Loki winced. He glanced out the window, and it was getting dark. He looked at his phone, and it was five thirty. Well, damn it.

 _So… what should we do_?

Another loading ellipsis. Loading… loading…

 _Tell your brother to text me_.

Loki kicked Thor under the table. He snapped his head up and growled. "What?"

"Mom wants you to text her. She's mad because Dad isn't here."

"Kay." He turned off his handheld game and pulled out his phone, then he typed a little, waited, grimaced, then typed again.

"Let's go get dinner."

"Dinner?"

"Yeah. I'm starving."

"What about Dad?"

Thor shrugged and grabbed Loki's suitcase too. "Mom said she'll get ahold of him. She put some money on the card for us, so we're going to B-Dub's."

There was no Buffalo Wild Wings in the terminal, but they found an Italian place open until eleven at night, so they grabbed a corner booth and ordered spaghetti and meatballs and Dr. Peppers. Loki finished his TV show and Thor beat the last of his game before switching to another one. He had marinara on his chin but didn't seem to notice.

Three Dr. Peppers, another round of spaghetti, and milkshakes later, it was close to nine, and Loki was getting ansty. Where was Dad?


	2. The One Where Frigga Phones A Friend

Hela kicked off her shoes and fell onto her couch. She'd spent the whole day interviewing applicants for a cyber security specialist, and if one more man tried to explain basic anti-virus, she was going to smash a laptop over someone's head. At least her roommate was out for the night, so Hela could veg out in peace. Her cell buzzed in her back pocket, and she slapped at her thigh before finding it and holding the too-bright screen to her face.

 _Frigga_.

"Yeah, no." She tossed her phone onto the ottoman and dropped her face back into the couch. It was two in the morning in Minnesota. Why the hell was her stepmom calling her at this time of night? Whatever the reason, she'd had a hell of a day, and she was not interested in bandying pleasantries with Frigga.

More buzzing.

She growled, grabbed the phone off the ottoman, and hit the answer button. "What?"

"Helen? It's Frigga." She sounded agitated, more than she usually did whenever she called her stepdaughter, which was almost never.

"Yeah, I have caller ID."

"Thor and Loki got off a plane in Phoenix a few hours ago, but your father isn't there to pick them up."

Hela rolled onto her back and rubbed her face. "It's almost eleven, can't he have a housekeeper or a nanny or something pick them up?"

"He's in Beijing."

She dropped her hand from her face and scowled at the ceiling. "Why the hell is he in Beijing?

"I don't know." It sounded like heels clicking on tile. Frigga was pacing again. "It's for work or something, and he's not answering the phone."

"So he just didn't think to mention this before you shipped the kids off or—"

"The lawyers insisted. He won the last round of custody hearings, so they judge sent them to Phoenix without even checking if he was there. Hela, I know we haven't always been on the best terms, but your brothers are in that airport all alone, and it's getting so late."

Hela sighed. "It's a six-hour drive."

"I know. I would just put them on a plane back in the morning, but it's storming so badly here that they aren't going to be landing any planes in Minneapolis tomorrow. I'll pay for your gas, for dinner, a hotel…"

"Fine." Hela rubbed her face and sat up. "Tell them I'm on my way."

She hung up, tossed her phone onto the coffee table, and sighed. Across the room, Fenris, her German Shepherd-husky mutt lounged on his dog bed and pricked his ears at her sigh.

"Hello, darling. Can you be good for a few hours while I go pick up a couple of complete strangers?"

He yipped, and she smiled. "Good boy."

She stood and walked to the kitchen to make herself some coffee because she was going to need the caffeine. Once the pot was brewing, she stuffed a pair of pajamas and a change of clothes into a bag, downed a mug of coffee, black, then poured the rest of the pot into a thermos, patted Fenris goodbye, and marched out of her apartment to her car. She had a full tank of gas, but it wouldn't take her the whole way.

She wound out of the parking garage and in a few minutes was on the freeway. At least this late at night, most of the traffic was in bed or parked outside a club. The interstate was bright as ever, but she could actually see the asphalt for once, so that was a welcome change. Hela put her phone on speaker and called up her roommate Amanda.

The phone range once, twice. Then, "What's up?"

"You busy?"

Amanda laughed. "If you call me, Netflix, and a bottle of Prosecco busy, then I'm absolutely swamped. Katie got a creeper, so we came home, and she passed out half an hour ago."

"And you're just chilling at her house…"

"Just until her roomie gets home."

Hela grinned. "Well, if I'm interrupting something important…"

"Please, you've already interrupted, so you might as well tell me why."

"I'm driving to Phoenix to—"

Something clattered on Amanda's end of the line. "You're what?"

Hela rolled her eyes. "Driving to Phoenix."

"That's six hours from here. Why? Why on earth are you doing that at this time of night?"

"Apparently, my stepbrothers are stranded in the airport, and my good-for-nothing father isn't there to pick them up." She glanced down at the speedometer then edged it closer to eighty-five. This road trip was already going to take forever without going forty miles an hour.

Amanda snorted, and glass clinked as she poured herself more wine. "Why are they even there?"

"Wish I knew. Apparently, my stepmom is finally leaving him, and he has the kids for now."

"What kind of crap judge decided that?"

"I don't know, but hopefully Frigga gives them hell for it." Hela speed up to a minivan chugging along at maybe sixty, so she swerved around it and sped on.

"I hope so. What a bunch of morons. Are you just taxing them to your dad's house or what?"

"I better not be. I would have paid for the taxi from the airport if that's what they needed. No, I'm going to pick them up and hang out with them until the planes start landing in Minnesota again."

Amanda took a long sip and sighed. "Sucks for you I guess. Are they decent kids?"

Hela scoffed. "How should I know? I haven't seen them in five years. Frigga is okay, I guess, so they might be. On the other hand, they could little monsters, so who's to say."

"Enough about my family soap opera. Tell me about Ben from legal."

Amanda's giggles rose to a sharp cackle. "Oh, sweetheart, do I have a story for you."

Adjusting her grip on the wheel, Hela settled back in her seat and in for the long drive.


	3. The One Where They Get McDonald's

Six hours later, Hela pulled up to the airport baggage claim. Orange light pooled on the sidewalk and cast long shadows off the cement support pillars holding up the rest of the airport. At nearly six in the morning, shuttle vans were already coming and going, and the airport was lurching back to life for the day. On the curb sat two tween boys propped on each other, eyes shut, and jaws slack, obviously more than half-asleep. Frigga hadn't set a picture by the time Hela hit her last pit stop—her stepmom was probably too flustered; she hadn't been making the best decisions in the last twenty-four hours—but there wasn't anyone else out here. Hela pulled up a few feet away and parked.

She opened the door and leaned on the top. "Thor? Loki?"

They perked up and peeled off each other. The blonde one shouldered his backpack and grabbed his wheely bag. He looked like a young, shaggy-headed athlete, lanky with the beginnings of muscle, not yet to the growth spurt that would fill out his awkward angles. He scowled a little, whether from lack of sleep or annoyance she couldn't tell, but he dragged his stuff over to the car then looked from his phone to her, then again before rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. "Hela?"

"Yep."

Behind him, the smaller, black-haired boy grabbed his own backpack and pulled his headphones down around his neck.

Hela flexed her stiff wrist and nodded to the passenger's side. "Get in."

She slid back behind the wheel and popped the trunk. The boys threw their suitcases in the back, and Thor got in the front seat while Loki slid in the back.

Loki leaned forward and tapped her shoulder. "Can we stop at a McDonald's?"

Hela glanced back at the kid. He was rubbing sleep from his eyes with his palm and said, "I need a huge latte."

She raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you a little young for that much coffee?"

"Aren't you a little old to still be this goth?"

She raised both eyebrows and glanced in the mirror. Her eyeliner and mascara were smeared to emo teen proportions, and her hair was missed and stiff with day-old hairspray. She frowned at the mess then back at the kid. "Do you want McDonald's or not?"

Thor snickered, but she glared at him. "Put your seat belt on, hotshot. And what do you mean still?"

The blond swiped on his phone and held it up so she could see. On the screen was a grainy picture of a framed photo: a family photo from some stuffy Asgard, Inc. event. There was Odin in that stupid suit, Frigga with a laughing black-headed two-year-old in her arms, a beaming, middle-school Thor in a suit to match his dad, and there to Odin's left was nineteen-year-old Hela. A black lace dress and jacket, thick eyeliner, and definitely green in that braid. It looked like it was from her last summer home, before she and Odin had their final blowout fight and she left for good.

Hela wrinkled her nose. " _That_ is an atrocious picture."

She pulled away from the curb and drove back to the golden fast food haven she'd seen on her way into the airport. The streets were quiet this early in the morning with only the early shift workers coming and going. She pulled into a space near the front door and parked, got out, and stretched, her back cracking from sitting for six hours with only gas station stops, and she definitely wanted coffee. She needed to sleep at some point soon.

The boys got out of the car and shook themselves more awake. Their clothes were wrinkled, their hair wild, but Loki ran his fingers through his black hair and yanked his sweater straight in a halfhearted attempt at straightening himself out, but they both reeked of airport and unwashed travel.

The three of them trooped inside. The bright earth-toned interior looked freshly cleaned and the college kid firing up the cash register didn't look half dead so that was a plus. Hela stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and jerked her chin towards the bathroom. "Go wash your hands. You've been in the airport for way too long."

Loki looked disgusted. "I know how to wash my hands." But he and Thor trooped off, and Hela turned her attention to the menu. The boys reappeared—a little too fast but she wouldn't push her luck. Without even looking at the menu boards, Thor marched to the counter, and the boys ordered three coffees, six burritos, and a breakfast sandwich between the two of them. Hela ordered herself a breakfast sandwich and an iced coffee and paid for the meal then stuffed the receipt in her purse for Frigga's tab. The three of them grabbed a high table and sat nursing their drinks through a long, awkward silence until their order was called.

They ate in silence until Hela decided she better say something. They were going to be stuck together for at least twelve hours, so she'd prefer if it was excruciatingly awkward the entire time.

"So the lawyers shipped you down here?"

Thor nodded. "Yup."

"Your mom says where I'm supposed to take you?"

Loki shrugged and swallowed down another gulp of coffee. "She said you can take us to a hotel or maybe Dad's house until he comes home."

"And how long is that going to be?"

"I don't know." He paused. "We don't have a key.

Hela sighed. "Well, I just drove all night to get here, so I'm going to need a bed at some point. Then we can figure out how long it'll be until the old fool comes home."

Thor glared at her. "Don't call him that. It wasn't his idea to strand us here."

She raised an eyebrow. Loki looked uncomfortable, but Thor looked defensive like he was still on his dad's side. Hela vaguely remembered what that felt like, defending a parent against every perceived slight, but she hadn't been on Odin's side since she was fifteen, not much older than the blond in front of her.

Maybe Odin hadn't meant to strand his sons in the Phoenix airport while he was halfway across the world, but he was the one fighting a custody battle while he was jet-setting off to China, obviously without a backup plan in case he won. Maybe Thor wanted to think the best of his father, but Hela couldn't help feeling a little sorry for the poor kid. She knew their father, maybe better than anyone, and Odin would disappoint him soon enough.

She ran her tongue over her teeth. "So how old are you two now?"

Thor tore off a bite of his burrito and mumbled around it. "Fourteen."

"I'm nine," said Loki.

Oh, good, they were both absolute children.

Thor crossed his arms. "And you? How old are you?"

"Twenty-six." She cradled her coffee in both hands and took a sip.

Loki's eyes bugged out of his head. "Holy crap."

She pointed a finger at him without dropping the cup. "Watch it. I picked your butt off the curb, I can leave it there again."

He flinched. "Sorry."

Hela grabbed her coffee, stood, and stretched. Then she grabbed her phone and held it up to grab the boys' attention. "I need to call into work. Finish eating and we'll head out."

She walked outside into the early sunlight. It was already warm, and it would be unbearable in a couple hours. She couldn't wait to get back to LA.

The line rang three times before it clicked. "Hey, this is Adam. I can't pick up, but leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Beep."

"Hey, Adam. This is Hela. I've had some family stuff come up so I need you to finish the last few interviews and send me your notes. We'll start response emails tomorrow. And tell Lara that I need a copy of the budget and those emails from accounting. Just try to keep things rolling, and I should be back in tomorrow. Email me if anything comes up."

She hung up and turned to walk back into the McDonald's, but the door swung open and Thor and Loki strolled out, the younger boy clutching another small coffee that he must have bought himself. The kid would never sleep again at this rate, but hopefully that wouldn't be her problem soon. Fishing in her pocket, she pulled out her keys and unlocked the car.

"Ready?"

Thor opened the passenger door and cocked his head. "Where are we headed?"

"Your dad's house."

"We don't have a key. Unless you do, but that would be kinda weird."

Hela smirked. "Don't need one."

Loki gave a drawn-out, confused hum, but Hela got behind the wheel and started the car. "Let's go. Before I fall asleep at the wheel."

They crawled in while Hela whipped out her phone and put in the address Frigga had texted her. Then she handed the phone to Thor, backed out, and sped off down the highway towards Odin's house.


	4. The One Where Hela Does Some Repotting

The twenty-minute drive to Scottsdale passed mostly in silence, though Thor flicked on the radio and found a top-50 station, interrupted only by the measured British voice from the GPS reading off turns and street names. The morning commute traffic dragged out the drive, but it was a far cry from the jammed six-lane highways of Los Angeles, so Hela leaned back and turned the radio up a little louder. On the horizon, the sun edged up over the mountains, casting pink and orange through the dust cloud suspended over the cityscape and blue shadows over Camelback Mountain. It would be daylight by the time they reached Odin's house.

Glancing in the mirror, Hela saw Loki passed out in the backseat, chin on his chest, headphones swallowing his ears. In the passenger seat, Thor had his own phone out, mashing away at some flashing game and very obviously ignoring her.

Finally, they turned off the highway and wound their way into a residential area. Odin had moved down to their old vacation house once the divorce proceedings started, and Hela thanked God the house wasn't in a gated community, or this would be a lot harder. The British GPS announced they had arrived, and Hela spied a familiar southwest-style home on the right side of the street.

"Bingo."

She pulled into the empty driveway shaded by yellow, wispy paolo verde trees. Riverstone covered the front yard, interrupted by golden barrel cacti, green-brown spurts of deer grass, and sharp aloe. Potted desert flowers lined the decorative wall that ran along the front of the house.

Hela threw open her door and got out. The air was dry, a little dusty, and not unbearably warm, but as soon as the sun was out in force, the heat would be obnoxious. They hadn't been here for a long time, mostly renting it out after Thor was born. Car doors slammed, and Loki and Thor got out to squint into the sun.

"Is this it?"

She raised an eyebrow at them. "Yeah. You not impressed?"

Thor shrugged. "It's fine, I guess."

Hela strode over to the decorative wall lined with orange and red flowers, and she put a finger to her lips as she regarded the identical pots. "Hmm. Which one would you use?"

Not the one closest to the door, that would be too obvious. Juvenile. The second, maybe. She grabbed and weighed it in her hand. Clay, heavy-duty. "Not bad."

Thor grabbed her arm. "Wait, what are you doing?"

"He hides a garage door opener in one of these."

"Wait, how do you know that?"

"There's been one out here for twenty years, and he's not the most unpredictable man I've ever met."

"What if it's not his house?"

She shrugged his hand off and held up a potted desert marigold. "Then I guess this will be embarrassing."

Thor opened his mouth, but she smashed the pot on the ground. Loki yelped and jumped back. The clay shards, flowers, and black dirt covered the pavement, but no garage door opener.

"Oh, well."

She grabbed the next pot and smashed it, then a third. The boys yelled, but she kicked a fourth off the wall, and a plastic rectangle clattered away, spraying dirt everywhere.

"There we go." She grabbed the button and hit it, and the garage door groaned and rattled open.

"Holy crap," Thor breathed.

She marched into the two-car garage that housed only a silver Camaro and a few plastic tubs of tools in an otherwise bare room, and in the right wall stood a door that led into the rest of the house.

"Let's see." She tried the handle, and it was locked. Unfortunate, but not unfixable. She tilted her ear towards the door and jiggled the handle a couple times. "Haven't changed the locks in ten years—a little dangerous. All sorts of nasty characters—" She flipped out her wallet, pulled out an expired rewards card, and slid it into the doorframe beside the lock. A quick push and the door swung inward. "—are coming knocking."

Cool air sighed into the hot garage, and a tiled, grey-brown hallway stretched into a spotless house. She turned back to the boys and smiled. "Looks like we're in."

The boys stared at her, and Thor blinked. "Who are you again?"

Hela smirked. "I'm the original family disappointment, boys." She strode into the tiled hallway and looked around. "Looks like nobody's home. Grab your stuff."

Behind her, the boys had stepped tentatively into the house, so she tossed them the car keys. They scrambled back outside, and Hela wandered further into the house. The hallway led into an immaculate, two-story living room with massive windows and stone fireplace that would never be used, and a magnificent black and silver kitchen. Someone had done some redecorating since the last time she was here, and the whole place looked austere. Barely lived in. Whenever Odin had moved in, he obviously hadn't spent much time settling in.

In the middle of the tile stood a pile of boxes. Unpacking apparently hadn't been too high on Odin's priority list, but on the couch sat an open box overflowing with picture frames. She crossed to it and picked up the one on top: a dusty photo of Odin, Frigga, Thor, and Loki somewhere mountainous and evergreen, probably Colorado. The perfect little family, all smiling and probably a couple years younger, not too long after she'd left for college. She tossed it back on the pile.

For a man fighting so hard for legal custody of his sons, he seemed awfully bent on leaving them out of his life.

Hela walked to the kitchen and threw open the stainless-steel fridge. Inside were a few beers, an energy drink, a few condiments, a package of hot dogs, and a half-empty bag of shredded cheddar. Not much for groceries.

Wheeled bags rattled across the tile, and she turned around. Thor and Loki looked around the house then to her.

"So do you have a tattoo?" Loki blurted.

A few really. One behind her ear, another up her spine, the one on her wrist. "Yeah."

He grinned. "Cool."

Even Thor looked impressed. "Can we see it?"

"Uh, how about another time. Maybe in five years when your mom says you can have one."

Loki's face drooped. "Aww, come on."

"Go unpack."

"Uh, where do we put our stuff?" Thor glanced around.

She gestured to the stairs. "Should be rooms upstairs if they haven't completely gutted the house."

She grabbed the energy drink out of the fridge and headed for the master bedroom down the first-floor hall.

"Where are you going?" Loki asked.

"To bed."

"Well… what are we supposed to do?"

"Whatever you want. Watch TV or something." She pushed open the door and flicked on the light. The king-sized, canopied bed was an atrocious shade of gold and white. How on earth did they keep it clean? She shut the door behind her and stripped off her jacket to the tank top beneath. Setting the energy drink down on the mahogany nightstand, she unzipped her boots and kicked them against the wall, then she fell face first onto the bed, her eyes too heavy to keep open any more. Her shoulders ached from clutching the steering wheel. The bed was ugly, but boy did Frigga know how to pick a mattress.

Down the hall, she could hear Thor and Loki yelling about something, arguing. Whatever. They were children, not stupid. They would be fine in their new home for a few hours. Hela grabbed a pillow and curled up for a well-earned rest.


	5. The One Where They Order Pizza

Loki slumped on his side on the couch, and his arm was stretched to full length, holding his phone as he facetimed his mom. She was home from work, all in her favorite sweater and her blonde hair pulled up, and she looked really tired.

"Hela still sleeping?"

He nodded. "She's kind of crazy."

Mom rubbed her forehead. "I know she's probably not what you're used to..."

"She's got tattoos and picked the lock with a credit card, it was super cool."

Mom's eyebrows almost hit her hairline, blonde with just a couple grey bits above her ears. "Really?"

"Yup. She's super punk." Hela was pretty cool. He didn't know anybody else who could pick locks in real life, and even Thor had been impressed by her devil-may-care attitude, though not as much her obvious dislike of their dad.

Maybe Mom wasn't thrilled by Loki's admiration, but she smiled. "Punk's cool now?"

Loki grinned. "Yeah, she's pretty cool. Why doesn't she ever visit?"

"Well, she was mostly out of the house by the time you were old enough to really remember her. Are you all getting along all right?"

He shrugged and kicked the box of dusty pictures tucked at the end of the couch. Dad must have swept them off the mantle and tossed them all in a box when he moved in, even though Loki liked all the pictures of them together and happy. If Dad didn't want them anymore, maybe he would take on up to his room. He kicked it a little harder, and the frames rattled gingerly. Fragile.

"Loki?"

He stopped kicking the box and jerked his attention back to his mom. "Huh?"

"I said have you both been getting along with your sister?"

"Yeah. She's been sleeping most of the day."

"Are you and Thor getting along?"

"I guess." Thor was upstairs watching TV or talking to his stupid friends or something. He'd already spent like four hours talking to his friends, especially Jane who was one grade older and really pretty. She was nice to Loki too, so that made her okay. He was already missing his own friends, his room, his bike. He wanted to go home.

"Good. Are you doing okay?" Frigga asked.

"Yeah. Loki buried his chin in his crooked elbow. "Are you okay?"

She forced a smiled, but he could tell she was sad too, a little cracked. "I'm fine. Do you two have enough money?"

Loki was sure they had maybe thirty dollars left of what Mom had put on the debit card before they got on the plane. He'd crept into Hela's bedroom to ask about lunch, but she'd been wrapped around a pillow and dead to his gentle pokes. Then he and Thor had looked in in the cupboards and found nothing, so they'd ending up ordering in from Jimmy John's. They could maybe order pizza for dinner, but if Hela wasn't awake they would have to pay for it. How much could pizza cost? Ten dollars?

"I think we're good. Hela bought us McDonald's for breakfast, and we had sandwiches for lunch."

She laughed, even if it was a little short. "Well, I'm glad there's some food in the house for you. You can ask Hela to take you grocery shopping, and I'll pay her back."

Groceries were boring. But Hela seemed cool, and she might let him get something fun like a donut from the bakery or the frozen Oreo churros he and Thor had seen in the Target near his house. Mom's house. He let his vision go out of focus and stared past the screen towards the huge windows and the dirt-colored, dust-coated world outside. "I want to come home, Mom."

She sighed. "I know. I'm so sorry this happened, but I need you to be patient just a little—" Her phone buzzed, and the screen turned grey with a little white message: video will resume. He inhaled and lifted his head, but then she was back, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

"It's your dad. I'm going to have to hang up, okay?"

He nodded. "Okay."

"I love you. Be good, and I'll see you again soon, I promise."

"Love you."

And she was gone. Loki rolled onto his side and stared at the black TV screen. Crying was for babies. He wouldn't cry. Mr. Heimdall, Mom's lawyer, would get this crap sorted out, and they'd be back home in no time.

A door thumped, and he sat up and rubbed his eyes. Hela stumbled out of the bedroom, her eyeliner even more smeared than it had been a few hours ago, almost raccoon ringing her eyes, and her hair was a mess. Somewhere between going to bed and getting up, she'd lost her boots, but her socks were black too, so the effect was pretty much the same. She looked like a mess, but a sharp one, like nobody in the world could touch her.

Loki sat up straight and watched her stalk to the fridge where she grabbed a beer out of the door, leaned against the cabinet, spied him, and raised the bottle in a half acknowledgment and twisted the cap that hissed off and clattered into the sink. "Morning."

"Hi."

She looked around the kitchen and spied the crumpled takeout papers strewn across the counter. "See you found yourselves food."

He puffed out his chest, glad she'd seen how self-sufficient they could be. "Mom said you have to take us grocery shopping, and she'll pay you back."

Hela pursed her lips and took another drink. "How about pizza or something?" Her phone buzzed, and she held up a finger. "Hang on."

She pulled it out of her pocket, glanced at the screen, and curled her lips back from her teeth in disgust before holding the phone to her ear. "What?"

Loki slunk back to the living room and hunted around for the remote, keeping his full attention on the conversation in the kitchen. Hela sounded mad, like as mad as Mom when she and Dad fought on the phone and she thought Loki and Thor was upstairs in bed. She was leaning against the counter, hip digging into the counter and her long nails clicking on the granite.

"Yeah, they got in last night, and _I_ had to drive all night from LA to pick them up. You're welcome."

Tense silence. Loki flipped the same three pillows over a couple times and found the remote poking out from the seat cushions.

"So you're just not coming back or…"

Loki froze. If Dad didn't come home soon, then they'd have to stay with Hela. But Hela couldn't stay forever, and they couldn't stay alone because Thor was only big enough to watch him overnight, not hours. They'd have to get sent home.

"Two weeks? You have got to be—" Hela glanced at Loki and paused. Then she turned her back on him and lowered her voice, but he went back to shuffling pillows. He wasn't sure Hela counted as a grown-up, but they weren't very good at keeping secrets. Christmas presents, birthday present, papers from the divorce lawyers.

"It's not about the money, Odin, it's about the fact that for some _godforsaken_ reason, I have to be the adult here because you and your lawyers sure as hell aren't."

Hela clicked her nails against the counter, fast and agitated as she listened to a voice Loki couldn't hear. She swore under her breath. " _Your_ sons? Then maybe you should act like it."

More clicking nails.

"Yeah, don't bring Frigga into this. She probably should have called someone else, but this? This is on you."

Another tense silence. Hela scoffed. "You know what? You're an ass."

She slammed her phone on the counter and knocked back the rest of her beer. Then she spun on Loki, who gasped and whipped his head down.

"What kind of pizza do you want?"

"Uh…"

"Supreme," said Thor.

Loki looked up, and his brother was standing on the second-floor balcony, leaning against the railing. His face was screwed up funny, and Loki realized his brother had heard everything too. Hela picked up her phone and typed something before scrolling and holding it back up to her ear. "You want Pepsi or anything?"

"Sprite," Loki said before his brother could say anything. Thor got to pick the pizza, Mom would say it was only fair.

Hela nodded then straightened her back as someone spoke to her. "Hi, I'd like to order a large supreme pizza, a two-liter Sprite, and… let's add an order of breadsticks or cheesy bread or whatever it is you've got." She gave Odin's address then hung up and looked back to them. "Did you unpack?"

"You told us to." Thor thumped down the stairs with the grace and lightness of an elephant.

"Well, pack again because tomorrow morning we're driving back to L.A."

Thor sputtered. "Wait, what?"

"I have to get back to work, and it looks like your old man isn't making an appearance for at least another month."

"You just said two weeks."

She gave him a knowing look. "Trust me, it'll be a month."

"Can you do that?" Loki draped himself over the back of the couch, hands dangling towards the floor.

She shrugged. "I called your mom's lawyer about an hour ago, and he called your dad's people and worked it out."

"Can we go to Disneyland?"

"We'll see."

Thor stuffed his hands in his pockets and wandered into the kitchen. "Can I have a beer?"

"Absolutely not."


	6. The One Where Loki Pets A Dog

Hela woke up on the couch to her arm dead with sleep, tucked awkwardly under her body, her face smashed into her own couch, and an unearthly pounding in her head. She groped around her coffee table until her fingers brushed her phone and she held the screen to her face. Ten forty. "What?"

Now that her head wasn't buried in a couch cushion, the pounding turned into music, heavy on the bassline, and it was thumping down the hall in her bathroom. She rubbed crust from her eyes and sat up.

Oh, right. She had brought her step-brothers home, then spent three hours on a conference call with Frigga and Odin, yelling and being yelled at while the boys watched TV and ate Korean barbeque with Amanda in the back bedroom.

Apparently, Odin wasn't happy his eldest, estranged daughter had dragged his boys off to the city of lights and angels, but she'd zoned out for most of the conversation after that; the bellowing and yelling was enough to give her headache, but Heimdall, Frigga's silver-tongued and suave lawyer, had finagled it so the boys could stay with her until the court could sort it out. She had a good job, a nice condo, and a stable life. She could be trusted with two boys for a couple weeks.

Questionable.

Hela rubbed her stiff neck and groaned. She must have passed out on the couch and slept until the next morning like she was back in college. Ick. She could live without ever going back to that.

Judging from the rock music blasting in her bathroom, somebody else was awake too, and not her roommate. Amanda didn't listen to that. Hela rolled off the couch to her feet and wandered down the hall. The bathroom door stood half ajar, and she pushed it open. "Boys…"

Thor stood in front of the mirror, shirtless, in his sweatpants, scraping at some white foam on his cheeks with a disposable razor.

Hela rubbed her eyes. "What on earth are you—"

Thor's eyes went wide, and he kicked the door. It slammed in her face and she staggered back into the wall before growling and kicking the door back open. "What are you doing?"

"Shaving! Leave me alone!"

She grabbed her bathrobe off the towel hanger and yanked it on over her tank top and jeans. "You're like twelve, why are you shaving? Where's your brother?"

Thor grabbed a towel off the rack and wiped his face down, half hiding behind the old emerald thing. "I dunno. Sleeping probably. And I'm fourteen."

Hela pinched the bridge of her nose, which ached from the door slamming into it. The last thing she wanted was responsibility for these two, but it was better than leaving the two knuckleheads to bake on a Phoenix curb, and she'd be dead before she screwed it up and gave Odin something to hold over her head for the rest of her life. "I cannot believe this. Where is he?"

Thor shrugged then sniffed. Then sniffed again. "Hey, do you smell that?"

"What?"

"Is something burning?"

Hela looked around her condo with a frown. A thin trail of smoke drifted across the living room ceiling, twisting back into the kitchen. She gasped and sprinted into the kitchen, slid on the laminate floor, and slammed into the pantry. On the stove bubbled a frying pan with three eggs.

Hela hissed, shoved the whole thing in the steel sink, and blasted the burning mess with the faucet. A plume of steam billowed through the kitchen, and Hela skidded to the balcony door, threw it open, and grabbed a hand towel to wave at the smoke detector. She stood on a chair and waved at the alarm. "Oh, I'm glad Heimdall didn't see that. Thor!"

"What?" he hollered from the bathroom.

Hela whipped the towel at smoke detector, not sure it was working. "Why the hell did you leave the stove on?"

"I didn't do anything! I've been in here for like an hour."

"It doesn't take an hour to shave!"

A second of silence then, "How would you know?"

Hela rolled her eyes. "Then where's your brother?"

"I don't know. Playing with the dog."

"You said he was asleep." Hela's fanning waned, and she looked around for Fenris, but the black dog and his toys were nowhere in sight. Just takeout boxes spilling out of the garbage can, licked clean and scattered. "Where is my dog? And where's Amanda?"

An insistent knock came at the door. Hela hopped down from the chair, threw the towel over one shoulder, and jogged to the door. "Loki! Where have you been? I am going to kill—"

She yanked the door open and found Amanda kicking at the frame, her hands full of Starbucks drinks and a reusable bag hanging from her right elbow. Her blonde hair was pulled back copious messy-bun, and she was in green skinny jeans, jacket, and flawless makeup. As usual.

"What kind of hello is that, dear?" She brushed past Hela and into the apartment, her heels clicking on the laminate, and she took in the bags piled behind the couch, the steam and smoke drifting out the open door, and the faucet running over the burnt eggs. "Well, it looks like the morning is off to a rough start, so I'll excuse it. But don't worry, I brought everyone breakfast, which, uh, looks like a good call."

"You are not going to believe the past couple days I've had." Hela peered out into the hall. "Is Loki with you?"

Amanda set her haul on the counter and turned off the sink. "The younger one? Nah, they were both asleep when I left. And not the little monsters we were afraid of. Loud though." She frowned at the thumping music still echoing down the hall.

Hela shut the door. "Don't you have work?"

Amanda laughed and gestured to her outfit. "It's Saturday, dear."

"Oh. Okay, great." She hadn't burned another vacation day on the road; that was nice.

Amanda looked over Hela's wrinkled jeans, tank top, bathrobe, and disheveled hair. "You just wake up?" She looked past her roommate and wrinkled her nose. "And what are you burning?"

Hela rolled her eyes. "Now that you're here, you can help me look for Loki." She strode down the hall to the bedroom and office. "Loki!"

"What do you mean look for him? Where did he go?"

Hela threw open the door to the office where the boys had slept on the pullout bed. The sheets and blanket were a wreck and scattered with little boy clothes, but both rooms were empty. She strode back into the living room, banging on the bathroom door as she passed. "Thor! Hurry up."

Amanda frowned. "You don't think he ran away do you?"

"He's not stupid, and all his stuff is here. And where is my dog?" Hela laced her fingers in her hair and groaned. "Fenris? Fenris! I'm going to kill him."

Thor wandered out of the bathroom in a hoodie and sweatpants, his probably hairless face pink from shaving. He waved awkwardly to Amanda and crossed to the fridge where he grabbed the orange juice, uncapped it, and took a swig straight out of the carton.

"Hey!" Hela grabbed it out of his hands and jabbed it at his face for emphasis. "Glass. We're not animals."

He looked embarrassed but didn't say anything, just grabbed a cheese stick out of the fridge and sulked out to the balcony.

"I hope he took his phone," Hela said, pulling her own out of her pocket. "Thor, what's your brother's number?"

"Don't worry about it," he said around a bite of cheese. "He's down there. Hey, can we use the pool?"

The women came out to the balcony that overlooked the courtyard. Down on the ground was the pool, the patio, and a fluffy, black dog dragging a slip of a boy along the pool deck.

Amanda snickered. "Found your dog."

Hela took the elevator down and found their way to the pool area where Loki stood up to his knees on the pool steps. Fenris was running back and forth, snout to the ground, and on the lawn chairs lounged a few ladies keeping an eye on the huge dog snuffling around. Not very often did Hela walk him down here, so he was probably ecstatic.

"Loki!" Hela shouted.

He whipped around and blanched. She stopped on the edge of the pool and crossed her arms. The boy seemed to remember himself and flashed a charming smile. "Hi, Hela."

"You wanna try and explain or…"

"He wanted to go for a walk."

"And the eggs you left on the stove?"

His smiled faded. "Uh…"

Hela rolled her eyes and whistled. Fenris barked and bounded over to them, knocking an empty chair aside and knocking his shaggy head against Hela's elbow. Uncrossing her arms, she scratched his shoulder and grabbed his dragging leash. "Good boy." Then she looked back to her half-brother. "Let's go."

He sighed and sloshed out of the pool.

Hela sighed. "Where are your shoes?"

He pointed to the chair Fenris had knocked over, and the dog trotted over to the nearest sandal and picked it up in his teeth, then came bounding back with it half in his mouth. Grimacing, Loki took his shoe and dip it in the pool to clean it off. Hela pinched the bridge of her nose.

Hopping on one foot, the kid pulled on his baptized shoes. "Can I go swimming later?"

"Let's see if you burned my apartment down first."

"Sorry."

She put an arm around his shoulders and led his to the elevator. "Come on. Amanda brought us breakfast."

And they headed back inside, Fenris bounding at their heels.


	7. The One Where Thor's Trying His Best

Loki, in fact, had not burned down the apartment, which he pointed out triumphantly until Hela made him scrub at the charred, eggy mess for an hour. The pan eventually had to be thrown away, but she didn't seem too mad about it. She even took them swimming later, so maybe she wasn't so bad. The rest of the day and the next passed mostly uneventfully. He finally finished watching Gravity Falls and chased Fenris around the apartment until Hela and Thor yelled at him.

Mom didn't call that day or the next, but she texted once to check in. She seemed a lot happier now that they here at Hela's house instead of hot as heck Arizona waiting for Dad to come back. On Sunday, Hela made Thai food, but after Amanda disappeared to hang out with friends (Thor said she was going clubbing whatever that was), they rented a movie.

Monday morning, Hela woke them up before it was even light out, and Loki growled and rolled out of bed. Deep down, he knew she was mostly nice. She'd come to get them, let them stay her house and swim and eat and stuff, but she kept pulling nonsense like this, and that irritated him.

The boys stumbled around the bathroom getting ready then out to the living room where Thor flopped on the couch and Loki made himself toast, chewing and staring into space. There wasn't any peanut butter that wasn't chunky, and he hated chunky peanut butter. He slammed the fridge door and just ate his toast plain.

Already unreasonably awake for the day, Hela grabbed a cranberry juice out of the fridge, threw her oversized bag over one shoulder, and grabbed her keys off the table. "Let's go."

Loki took another bite of his toast and mumbled "what?" around it.

"We're going to work."

Thor poked his head around the couch and shot her a disgusted look. "Work? I'm not five."

"Hmm. Well, Saturday I woke up to a missing kid and dog and a kitchen full of smoke, so sorry if I'm not uber confident about leaving you here alone all day."

Loki scowled. "We fed ourselves the other day at Dad's house. And we flew down here all by ourselves."

He could take care of himself mostly. He could cook eggs and macaroni, wash his own dishes. He just wanted to stay here in the apartment, not meet new people.

Hela smiled, in that way that said he might be right but she'd already made up her mind. Condescending, Mom called it. Like Dad, even if Hela wore it a little sharper in the eyes.

"Nice job," she said. "Now put your shoes on."

"I don't want to."

Her smile faded to a warning raise of the eyebrows. Loki scowled but went to put his shoes on. They got their stuff together and followed her out the door.

As usual, Thor took shotgun "What is it you do exactly?"

"I'm a COO for an architecture firm."

"Uh…"

She turned the key, and the engine rumbled to life. "I make sure not everything hits the fan at once."

"So, like what you normally do but you get paid for it."

"Something like that."

A traffic-heavy hour later, Hela pulled up to a shiny high rise, and they trooped inside and up to elevator to the eighth floor. Open and airy, the office was full of windows overlooking the city and its haze of sound and smog and motion. People stood at desks and balanced on green exercise balls, and even though the carpet was still corporate and ugly, all the desks were black and space-like. In the center of the room stood a giant table loaded with models of buildings, city blocks, and interior spaces—all cardboard and Hobby Lobby trees and 3D printed models. It reminded Loki of a documentary he'd watched with Mom once, one about a guy who had built a scale model of Central Park in his basement. He wondered if they had tiny plastic dogs too.

Hela led them through the office and a couple of the desk jockeys glanced up, only to do a double take and watch Hela and her brothers march to her desk. Loki stared back at a couple of them before his sister opened a glass door and waved them in. Her office was separated from the main space by a big glass wall, and she shared the space with a little sitting area and another desk that had a white mug with "WORLD'S BEST CFO" plastered on it. Loki wasn't sure what a CFO was, but if their desk as behind glass like Hela's they had to be important.

Hela dropped her bag in the spinny chair behind her desk, or at least what Loki guessed was hers. There weren't any pictures or mugs to mark it as a personal space, just a desktop with two big screens and a metal tray stacked with manila envelopes. Now that he thought about it, her apartment didn't really have of her photos either—well, photos in ugly frames of her with Amanda and other people Loki didn't know, so those pictures were probably Amanda's and not Hela's at all.

He glanced at her, and she pointed to the sitting area with its weird dish seats and coffee table of building magazines. "You can hang out here or there's TV in the lunch area." She gestured across the office to a full-sized fridge and coffee station, and yep, there was a TV with soccer playing.

Pointing at both of them, she backed towards the door. "Don't bug anybody. This is an office, not my house."

Thor slumped into the dish chair and put his headphones in. "Yeah, yeah."

She shot him a warning look before leaving the office and crossing to a bald guy chewing on a pen and staring at some spreadsheets. His head was shiny, but he wore skinny jeans and converse, so he couldn't be too awfully old. Hela spun another chair over, and the two started yakking. Something about Chicago, about Hong Kong.

In the disk chair, Thor was already watching something on his phone. They'd forgotten to ask for the Wi-Fi password, but maybe it was open like at Caribou Coffee. Loki wandered over to Hela's desk, moved her bag to the floor, and claimed the spinny chair. After a couple test spins, Loki settled into the faux leather and went through all the drawers. A couple were locked, but he found the key taped to the underside of the chair. Mostly file folders of papers that didn't make much sense, office supplies, gum. He took two pieces and sucked the mint flavoring out of them before chewing the flavorless wad left behind.

After a while, Loki moved onto practicing his supervillain spin around. Fingers steepled or gripping the armrests? Glaring or cackling?

 _Tap tap_

On the other side of the glass stood a man sporting dreadlocks, dyed red and all bright against his dark skin and snappy, grey vest. He flashed a white-toothed grin and held up a flat white box with a questioning shrug of his shoulders. Hela had said not to bug anyone, so Loki frowned and shook his head.

The man flipped the lid back and tilted the box to reveal rows and rows of donuts. Loki hopped off his chair and bolted for the door. The man was a lot taller up closer, but he bent his knees a little so the kid could take his pick.

Loki wiggled a chocolate-covered donut free and grinned. "Thanks."

"No problem. Hela a friend of yours?"

"She's my step-sister." Loki took a bite of his donut and nodded. Definitely the right call to get chocolate.

If the donut man was surprised, he didn't show it, just nodded like Loki had announced LA traffic was bad. He offered a donut to Thor, who had just wandered out after his brother.

"Well, looks like she and Adam will be talking shop for a long time. You two want to come hang with me for a bit?" He gestured back to a long table near the pile of models. "Get you some graph paper and rulers."

"Sounds cool."

Loki and Thor followed him across the office, and true to his word, Jordan, the donut man, gave them both some big blue graph paper with pencils and sliding rulers before turning back to his team and their own drawings all pinned up on a board. After a minute, Thor wandered off the model table then the TV then from desk to desk until it sounded like he'd made friends with the entire office, chatting with somebody new every time Loki looked up.

Every once in a while, Loki glanced at Hela, who had retreated back to her office and was pacing back and forth on her phone, then typing on her computer, then back on her phone, then disappearing with some coworkers into another room.

Jordan brought Loki an orange juice and another donut and pointed to the doodles spilling over half the page. "Not bad, little man. Keep it up and maybe you'll be working here someday."

This was really different from going to work with Dad at Asagrd, Inc. There, Dad had a giant office with real walls instead of glass ones, and he'd spent most of the day behind his desk or in meetings while Loki and Thor chilled on the floor or sprawled on the couch. But they probably wouldn't ever be going to work with Dad again. Loki went to drawing and snapped his pencil from pressing too hard.

For lunch, Hela gave Thor and Loki some cash, and the duo walked to a nearby Subway and brought back lunch. Later that afternoon, Jordan showed them the 3D printer, and they sat and watched forever as the printer head laid down then layer after layer of plastic until Jordan peeled up a red hammer pendant and passed it to Thor.

"What is this supposed to be?"

"You know, Thor's hammer? Tough as nails and all that."

Thor shot him an unimpressed look. They'd only heard jokes about their names a million times, but Jordan didn't seem to be joking. He pulled a pendant out of his shirt, a small wooden disk with smaller, worn carvings on it. "Saint Anthony's the patron saint of lost stuff. My grandma gave it to me when my parents split, said he was good at finding people and things that hadn't quite made it home yet. Hammer's like an anchor, kind of a fixed point that'll always reel you back in to where you need to be."

Thor turned the thumb-long hammer over in his hands, and his expression softened. "Thanks."

Loki leaned forward on his stool, almost tipping off balance. "Do me next."

Smiling, Jordan input the next job, and Loki watched for another small eternity while a weird green figure eight emerged under the print head. When the older guy handed it to him, it was still warm on top, and Loki blinked at it. "Uh, I'm not super good at math."

"It's a snake." Jordan flipped it over, revealing a snake with its tail firmly in its own mouth, head in profile and staring at Loki. Was is gonna ask a question or give an answer?

"Infinity and all that." Jordan traced the snake's body around a couple times. "No matter where you start, it just keeps going."

Loki blinked and traced over the teeth and down the throat and back up the body. "I don't get it."

Chuckling, Jordan ruffled the kid's hair. "I gotta get back to work, but I think you'll figure it out."

As the mystery printing man went back to his sketches, Thor and Loki sat and inspected their new gifts.

By the end of the day, the brothers had migrated over to the TV and fought over the remote. Thor, as usual, won by right of being taller and stronger, so they watched soccer for a couple hours, but then he got distracted texting his friends—probably Jane—so Loki changed the change to cartoons and forgot about the weird plastic snake in his pocket.

"Good news, kid."

At his sister's voice, Loki looked away from the TV. "What?"

She put both hands on her hips and smirked like she'd accomplished some great thing. "You get go home."

Loki jerked to his feet, tipping orange juice dregs across the table. "Really?"

"Mm hmm. You'll be back home starting your mom's kitchen on fire."

Thor pumped a fist. "Yes! When?"

"As soon as we can get you plane tickets." Hela looked at her watch and flinched. "Oh, you guys must be starving. Let me grab my purse, and we'll head home."

Thor popped his headphones in, and his thumbs moved furiously as he updated probably half of St. Paul about the news. Loki turned off the TV, gathered up his giant blue page of doodles, put in his headphones, and opened messages to send his mom a voice message when he heard people talking, talking about him. Keeping his headphones in, he glanced around until he spied them. Most of the workers had gone home for the night, but at a nearby pair of desks sat two workers typing away at their computers. One snorted and said in an undertone, "Hopefully someone comes to pick them up this time."

The other snickered. "You'd think. But all that money and you don't want your own kids. What's wrong with rich people honestly?"

"No kidding."

"No really, why else would they leave them pack 'em off on old Hell or High Water? She does't know jack about kids."

Was that true? Were they only here because Mom and Dad didn't want to deal with them? Was he that awful? Loki blinked and lowered his phone.

"Ready." Hela tapped Loki on the head. "What's wrong with you?"

Loki pulled off his headphones. "I'm not hungry."

Hela rolled her eyes. "It's because you ate too many donuts. Come on."

"No!" He threw his stuff on the ground, scattering pencils everywhere.

Hela flinched back. "Hey!"

Her face turned murderous, and Loki shrank back. Behind Hela, Thor stood with his stuff in hand, eyes wide as he looked from the mess on the floor to Loki to their sister. The office was really quiet. Why was everyone looking at him? He just wanted to go home.

Hela pointed at the door. "Go stand in the hall."

"But—"

"Now."

Loki slid to his feet and shuffled out to the hall where he slumped against the wall. A small eternity later, Thor came out of the office and shot his brother a "what the heck?" look, and Loki ducked his head. He hadn't meant to, but those stupid office workers had made him so mad—

Hela stormed out of the office, striding right past them to the elevator. The boys sprinted to catch up and just reached her as the door dinged open. Silently, they followed her into the elevator and waited for the long ride home.

The siblings drove home in tense silence. Hela gripped the wheel so hard her wrists ached, and she fumed the entire drive and up to the apartment where she slung her purse onto the couch and whirled on the silent boys. "I cannot believe you."

Loki and Thor trailed in after her, Thor with his hands jammed wrist deep in his pockets, Loki just sniffing and kicking at the floor.

"What the hell was that? How old are you, five?"

Thor jerked his head up, lips and brows pressed into angry lines. "It's not a big deal."

"Don't talk to me like that. You have no idea how embarrassing that was for me." How was she supposed to run a business when she couldn't keep a couple kids in line? She'd fought for this job, then turned around and taken valuable time to go pick their butts off the curb and this was how—

She sounded like Dad. Hela dropped her snarl. They were just kids; they didn't deserve to be ripped apart.

Just kids.

Dragging a deep breath, she put both hands on her hips and nodded to the couch. "Come on, sit down."

The boys shuffled to the couch, Loki refusing to look at her and Thor just looking mad.

"So…"

Loki stared at his hands. Hela licked her lips. "Wanna tell me what's really bothering you?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" Hela clenched her jaw and took a couple deep breaths. "Okay. Look. It has been a really stressful week, for all of us. So I don't know what your problem is… what's bugging you, but you'll be home in a couple days, so we just have to make it through the next few days."

"Yeah, sure," Loki muttered.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Don't be Dad. Don't be Dad.

He pressed his lips together and looked everywhere but at her. Hela nodded. "All right,

I know I'm still pretty much a stranger. You don't have to talk to me."

Thor hitched his shoulders, and some of the anger had gone out of him, if only a little.

"I'm going to make dinner. You can hang out here or in your room, but food will be finished in half an hour."

Dinner was just as awkward with Thor putting down three helpings of hamburger helper while Loki picked at his plate. Hela tried to put on a movie but when Amanda came home, Loki complained of an upset stomach and went to bed before nine.

She didn't do kids for exactly this reason. Adults she could do; they were just as dramatic but at least she could tell them to shut up and back off without worrying about anyone crying. She thought about texting Frigga but decided against it. Heimdal's call that afternoon had been a relief, that Frigga had gotten the idiot judge to turn custody back over to her at least until Odin got his crap together and back on American soil to plead his case.

If Loki was having a phase or getting sick, it would be better for his mom to deal with it at home then for his half-stranger step-sister. She didn't know why he'd freaked out, but hopefully everybody was okay in the morning. The last thing she wanted was to turn into her dad.

In the middle of the night, after tossing and turning for no a couple hours, Hela decided to get up for a drink of water, maybe answer a couple emails. Anything was better than lying in bed trying not to stew.

She shuffled out of the bedroom, careful not wake Amanda even though her roommate slept like the dead, then down the hall towards the bathroom light. The boys slept with the door cracked open and the bathroom light on, though neither boy would admit to wanting it.

"Thor?" Loki's whisper was probably meant to be quiet.

The older boy let out a long, half-awake hmm.

"Are we really going home?"

"Mm hmm."

"Are you sure? What if… what if Mom doesn't come get us from the airport?"

"That's stupid."

"Nu-uh. Dad wasn't there to get us."

"Cause he's in China." A creaking of springs. "You know they're, like, fighting in court over who gets to keep us right? With lawyers and all that?"

A long silence. "Yeah."

"Yeah? So don't be stupid."

"Okay."

Another creak of springs. Silence, and Hela took a few steps towards her bedroom, but then Loki took a deep breath, and she froze.

"But what if they're fighting so they don't have to keep us? What if they put us in foster care?"

Thor gave a snort. "What do you know about foster care?"

"I don't know." A smothered sob. "I wanna go home."

"Hey. Geez, Loki, don't cry." An awkward silence. "Look, I'll be eighteen in a couple years, and I'll get some of my piece of Dad's company, right? We'll run away and get our own place, and it'll have a pool and a basketball court, and it'll be awesome. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Hey. See this? I'm the anchor or whatever like Jordan said."

"Hammer. I googled it."

"Hammer. I'll just pound anything that gets in our way."

Loki laughed and sniffed.

"Mom will come get us. Don't worry."

The boys fell silent. Hela sighed and leaned her head against the door frame. This was going to be tougher than she thought.

* * *

A/N

Hey, everybody. I've been on the endless treadmill of work, school, responsibilities, which hasn't left much time for fun writing. Since it's feels like forever since I updated, have a chapter twice as long as normal!


	8. The One Where They Hit The Road

Hela woke up at three in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so she stretched the kinks out of her back and retrieved her laptop. If she was going to be awake at this ungodly hour, she might as well find plane tickets. The sooner the boys got home, the happier they would be and the sooner her life could go back to normal. After sliding on sweatpants, she set her laptop up on the dining table, brewed some coffee, and worked through a dozen emails. Fenris padded to her and curled up at her feet, a warm footrest with his flanks rising and falling.

Some work out of the way, she pulled up a travel site and dug through LAX flights to Chicago via the Minneapolis airport. After talking with Adam, she had a business trip to the Windy City to meet with a client, so maybe she could fly the boys home then hop on another plane to Chicago. Maybe having an adult along would calm some of Loki's anxieties. Or not. She didn't remember him as a particularly anxious kid, but he'd been what? One? Two, maybe, when she'd stormed out for good.

Hela shook the memory of that fight from her head and scrolled down the obnoxiously orange webpage.

Nothing. Not on this short notice, unless the boys were willing to stay in LA another week or Odin wanted to cough up eight hundred dollars a ticket.

Hela frowned and expanded the search to Burbank, then Long Beach, then John Wayne, until she was looking for flights out of San Fransisco and Las Vegas.

Nothing.

Growling, she checked her phone. No emergency texts. Four forty. That meant it was what? Eight forty in Minnesota? Hela scrolled through her contacts until she found Frigga and hit call. The phone rang twice then:

"Good morning, Helen." The woman sounded weary, the kind that sleep doesn't fix and early morning calls can't make worse.

"Hi, Frigga. We have a problem."

A long sigh. Hela plunged ahead, better to plunge ahead. "I'm looking at plane tickets, and it's not looking good. Not unless you're willing to put the boys on separate flights or leave them here a couple more days after I fly to Chicago for a meeting."

"I can't leave the boys in LA by themselves. Who would you leave them with?"

"My roommate will be here. Adam, he works for me, he has kids so maybe..."

"Absolutely not. I can't leave the boys with strangers after all this."

Hela snorted. "You left them with me."

"I trust you."

Taken aback, Hela blinked. "Maybe you shouldn't. They haven't had a vegetable since they got here."

Frigga laughed, and this time it sounded genuine. "They'll survive that." Then her laughter faded, and the weariness crept back into her voice. "You must think I'm a terrible mother."

Hela shifted in her seat, then stood and walked towards the balcony. She just wanted to buy some plane tickets, not get in a heart-to-heart with her stepmom, but she heard herself say, "You know I don't really care that you're divorcing him or why. I bailed a long time ago, so I don't think I get to judge."

"I don't know what I'm doing anymore, Helen. We wanted different things, we stopped talking, I thought we could be reasonable about the boys... I..."

Hela slid open the glass door and stepped out into the cool morning air. The sun wouldn't be up for another hour, but the sky was greying over the skyline and only the brightest stars lingered overhead. Crossing her arms against the cool air, Hela decided she might not be judging, but she was certainly having some regrets. Wearing a tank top. Having this conversation.

Frigga sniffed. "I just want this to be over. I just want my kids back. I'm sorry."

Was she going to cry? Amanda only cried after an ugly, ugly break up, and that hadn't happened in two or three years. Hela couldn't even remember the last time she herself had cried; she didn't know what to do with a crying… anyone.

Frigga took a shaky breath, but Hela blurted, "What if I drove them out?"

"What?" She was definitely crying.

"I could—" What was she saying? She was already regretting this. "I could drive them out. It would only take what three days? I drop them off at your house and still get to Chicago on time."

"No. No, you don't have to do that, I can fly out and rent a car and..."

"Don't be ridiculous. Keep the money to pay for your miracle lawyer."

"Okay. Okay, I... thank you. Thank you so much, you're amazing."

"We'll leave as soon as I can get everything pulled together."

"Okay. Let me know if you need anything: hotel reservations, places to eat or walk around. I'll put money on the boys' debit card for gas and food..."

"Yeah, I'm gonna go before your wedding planner kicks in."

Frigga laughed again. "Okay. Have a good day. I love you."

Then she hung up before Hela could react, leaving the younger woman standing in awkward silence. It was probably just a reflex goodbye from calling Thor and Loki so much. After a couple seconds, she went back inside, did some numbers crunching, and started breakfast. Once she had pancakes, scrambled egg whites, English muffins, and juice on the table with another pot of coffee brewing, Hela went into the office-bedroom. In the dim light filtering through the shades, Loki and Thor were sprawled across the hide-away bed, limbs akimbo and Thor wrapped in all the blankets. She shook them awake. "Guys. Hey, wake up."

Thor lifted his head, bleary-eyed. "Wha..."

"Up. We got places to be."

Thor patted around the bed for his phone. "Wha time's it?"

Hela shook Loki, who rolled off the bed and jerked awake. Then she pulled the blinds up and jerked her thumb at the door. "Breakfast is ready, so get a move on."

Yawning, Thor sat up and ran a hand through his static hair all on end. "Don't wanna go to work."

"You wanted to go home though. We've gotta pack if we're going to drive there before my meeting."

Loki bolted to his feet. "Road trip? Hell yeah!"

"Watch your mouth, or I'll change my mind."

Loki grabbed an armful of clothes off the ground, hopefully with a full outfit somewhere in the tumble. "I gotta beat Thor to the bathroom." Then he was gone.

Thor rolled out of bed, extricated himself from his cotton cocoon, and found his phone. "Don't you have important work stuff to do?"

"This is work stuff. Adam filled the cyber security job, and it'll be good for them to manage a while without me. If they can. We'll see."

She left him digging through his ratty old duffel bag and tossing clothes onto the bed. In the kitchen, Amanda was already up knocking around in her penguin pajamas and serving herself a plate. "This is nice. What brought all this on?"

"Apparently, I'm driving the boys home, and it's going to take all day for them to pack."

Amanda's eyebrows met her hairline. "Wow."

"I haven't taken a vacation in a year—"

"Two years." Amanda sipped at her coffee.

Hela shot her a look and sat down. "We can't get plane tickets, so we're just going to drive."

Amanda spit a mouthful of coffee back in her mug. "To Minnesota? Middle of nowhere Minnesota."

This time, Hela rolled her eyes. "It's a three-day drive and cheaper than flying for a thousand bucks apiece."

"Hmm. That makes sense. Well, buy me a Vikings t-shirt. And if you're driving, you can take the dog with you."

"What? No. Amanda."

"He'll destroy the apartment if you leave."

She looked at Fenris lying on the carpet, and he raised his head and thumped his tail once. Yelling echoed from the bathroom. Hela buried her face in her hands. This was going to be a disaster.

Hela ran to the store for food—some snacks that were supposed to be the best road trip food. She came home with arms full of grocery bag only to find the boys huddled in front of her laptop, zooming in and out on some national park in Google Maps.

"Jane said she saw a bear there last year," said Thor. "Can we go?"

"You want to drive hours out of the way to wander through backwoods?"

Loki twisted around and looked at her like she'd left her brain to melt in the car. "They have bears."

Hela dropped the reusable bags on the table. "Make a list I guess. Your mom is never going to let you leave the state again, so I suggest you choose wisely."

That night Amanda helped them pack the car to overflowing, and at four the next morning, they piled in. They buckled in and promptly passed out with Loki nestled against Fenris, fingers curled around the mutt's thick dark fur. Maybe bringing the dog wasn't the best idea, but Frigga had a house with a yard where Hela could stash him until she got back from Chicago.

Hela got to enjoy the sunrise in the relative silence of early morning LA traffic. The thick city buildings grew shorter and sparser with more brown-green in between them, and the sky got clearer as it brightened. The skyscrapers gave way to shorter, less frequent buildings, interspersed with stubborn, gnarled trees and bush shrubs.

Thor drifted to consciousness around eight thirty, yawning and stretching so loudly she thought Loki would wake up, but he knotted his hands in Fenris' fur and slept for another hour. Thor stared blankly out the window, blinking at the light.

As the backseat rider, Loki was the designated snack distributor, so he fished around in the cooler bag and snack box and passed out granola bars, cheese cubes, and strawberries. Fenris whined, and the snack master slipped him a cheese cube. Thor was in charge of directions and finding good radio stations, and he found one running comedy sketches.

The suburbs gave way to countryside that grew steeper and less and less green as they sped up into the mountains and away from the sprawling metropolis.

"We've been driving forever." Loki flopped awkwardly across the cooler, one arm dramatically across his face. "I've been in this car for eighty-seven years."

Hela glanced in the rearview mirror. "Please, you've only been awake for three hours."

"I hate it."

"I doubt a ten-hour car ride is going to kill you."

He moaned and went limper.

"Fine. We'll stop at the next town and fill gas."

Loki perked up a little bit. "Where are we headed anyway? Will we pass the Grand Canyon?"

"I told you that's too far south. We'll head through Vegas, then up to Salt Lake—"

"Vegas?" Now Thor was definitely awake. "Sweet, can we drive the strip?"

"I don't want to be a throw rug in your mom's dining room, so no."

"Come on, I'm not a baby."

"We'll find something else, kay?"

Thor leaned back in his seat. "Okay."

Hela leaned back in her seat and rolled her shoulders. Maybe the next three days wouldn't be a total disaster after all.


	9. The One Where They Technically Survive

Hela did stop at the next gas station—a new-ish, red and yellow Shell in a town of maybe four thousand. Heat rose off the nearby highway in hazy columns, and the dull rush of passing cars echoed through the lot. Everything smelled like baked dirt. The white cement lot was dusty but mostly intact, a sharp contrast to the endless, scrub brush desert running in all directions.

Hela slammed the car door and wrinkled her nose at the thick desert air. It had to be pushing ninety degrees. Maybe a leather jacket hadn't been a good fashion choice.

Thor scooted out of the passenger seat and flipped his shades down, looking around almost sun-dazed. "Where are we?"

"Halfway to Vegas I would guess." She pulled out her wallet and tapped on the glass of the back window to catch Loki's attention. "Hey, kid. You need a drink?"

He shook his head.

She pointed to Fenris, his pink tongue lolling out of his head as he panted against the heat. "Take him for a walk then."

Loki held up his thumbs, clipped a leash onto the dog, and opened the door. Hela blinked, and Fenris was halfway across the parking lot with Loki in tow, beelining for an Astroturf square with three palm trees. An abnormally green patch stranded in the middle of the desert. Fenris ran back and forth with his nose to the ground and paused to huff loudly over a clump of grass or a dirt clod, little to no regard for Loki, who trailed behind like a small grey moon in orbit around the black mutt.

Hela started pumping gas and slid her fingertips into her jean pockets, elbows akimbo. On the other side of the car, Thor stretched and groaned. If he was sore now, he was in for a rough few days.

The gallons and the price climbed, and Thor made no move to go inside. Just stretched and watched a dust devil kicking up in the distance. This was awkward. At least in the car they had reached a tolerable silence. She should probably say something.

"So…" She flipped her own shades down, and the desert dimmed a few shades. "What are you into these days?"

Thor craned his neck and stretched his shoulders. "What?"

"When I left for college, you were into astronomy and dinosaurs. So what's your thing now?"

His forehead creased. "I don't know. I don't have… a thing."

"Do you play football or rugby or something?"

"Hockey."

Not really a surprise. Thor was well on his way to being stupidly tall and reasonably strong. She remembered hockey—never played it herself, but most of her friends growing up did, and it usually ended in split lips and sweaty gear, conquests that held little appeal for her even though she'd bloodied plenty of smart mouths and snot noses in her youth. At that point in her life, she'd been more interested in following Odin around like a puppy, in being a cutthroat business mogul.

With a blink, she realized her thoughts had wandered, something she'd caught herself doing more and more since Frigga's panicked midnight call had dragged her back into this family. She glanced back at Thor who was running his fingers through longish blond hair.

She ran her tongue over her teeth and grimaced at the grit she found. "So what else?"

Thor frowned. "What do you mean 'what else?'"

"What, is hockey your whole life? You eat, sleep, and breathe it?"

He blinked at the sudden harshness in her tone, the cutting edge always at the ready. Try again.

"You got any other hobbies? Stuff you enjoy?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. I like books."

Surprised, Hela nodded. "Books are cool. Got any to keep you busy on the road?"

"Yeah. Mom can't read on the road; she gets sick, but I'm fine."

The pump clicked off. Hela grabbed her receipt and waved to Loki, who waved back and went back to keeping Fenris' leash free of his legs. Thor headed inside, and Hela held out her hands. "Where are you going?"

"Bathroom." He didn't turn around.

"Why didn't you go before…"

But he was already inside.

"Ugh. Loki!"

"What?"

"We're leaving."

"Kay!" He pointed across the highway to a lofty Starbucks logo. "Can I get coffee?"

Hela jabbed a finger at the gas station and mouthed, "Coffee. Right here." But the kid rolled his eyes. "Nah, I want good coffee!"

Hela rolled her eyes, got back behind the wheel, and pulled ahead into a parking space. A few minutes later, Thor got back in with a fistful of beef jerky sticks, and Fenris hauled Loki into the backseat. The younger brother caught his breath and peeled off his grey hoodie, leaving his black hair spiked in all direction. It had been cold in pre-dawn LA, but now he looked a little flushed from his quick walk. "Okay, let's go get coffee."

Shifting her sunglasses to the top of her head, Hela glanced in the mirror at him. "We'll get coffee, but we're not stopping every thirty minutes so you can pee. I can't miss my meeting."

"I'm not five." Loki screwed up his nose and whipped out his phone.

Hela pulled out of the gas station, crossed the bridge spanning the freeway, and pulled into the long line for the Starbucks drive-through. After sorting out their order, Thor turned to Hela and sniffed. "So… what's your thing? You like buildings?"

"Not particularly, no."

"But Jordon said you guys did architecture. Like designed skyscrapers and hospitals and stuff."

"Oh. No, I don't do any of that. I just run the business end of it."

A frown furrowed Thor's forehead. "So you're like a manager? Why don't you—"

"COO. I'm senior management."

The car in front of them rolled forward, and they pulled up to the screen where the boys got frappuccinos and Hela ordered a coffee, black.

"Why don't you work for Dad?" asked Thor.

Hela curled her lip back and half-shrugged. It was a fair question, but Thor still seemed well aboard the S.S. Odin and Asgard. "It didn't work out."

Loki leaned forward. "Why are you in LA though?"

After her mom died, Odin had raised her in the business—took her to board meetings, investor meetings, conferences, everywhere when he was building Asgard, Inc. He'd spent her entire life calling her his right-hand man, meant for great things, only to change his mind. Dear old Dad molded her in his image only to decide he didn't like what he saw. She smiled, lips curled back from her teeth in a sneer. "I was too ambitious, picked up too many of his flaws and bad habits. Odin he wanted to be a philanthropist-man of the people-but I didn't get with the program and it got embarrassing."

Thor frowned. "So, you got mad cause he was giving away money?"

Hela's grip on the steering wheel tightened. "I got mad because he's a hypocrite. He met your mom-oh, she was nice enough-but suddenly he decided the corporate ladder wasn't enough. He wanted a happy home and a happy family. So he went to all those charity dinners and dances, smiling with Frigga on his arm like he hadn't spent the twenty years orchestrating corporate takeovers and playing with shell companies and firing people who got in his way. You don't get as rich as Odin without screwing a few people over. A lot of people."

So rather than stay for the soft jazz parties and plastic smiles, the screaming fights and slamming doors, she'd left for college and had never come back. Got her MBA, landed this job, carved her own path to success. She had more than her fair share of flaws-bitterness, power lust, a cutting tongue-but at least she owned how terrible she was. She'd never tried to gild it over with pristine family photos and fundraiser balls.

Thor leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms sullenly. Maybe she shouldn't be talking smack about Odin with everything that was going on, but it was a little late to bite it all back.

Thor leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms sullenly. The window squeaked open, and the barista leaned out. "All right. We've got a black coffee no cream, a caramel frap, and a chocolate frap?"

"Yep."

"Do you and your kids need any drink holders?"

"They're not my kids," Hela snapped.

The barista blinked. "All right. Well, have a great day." And the window squeaked shut.

She passed the drinks back, got back on the freeway, and speed through to desert towards Vegas. Hela stared at the road and tried not to brood. For another twenty minutes, they drove in awkward silence, punctuated only by Loki's slurps and Fenris' yawns.

Then Thor shifted and took a deep breath. "Science is cool, too. I'm pretty good at that."

Hela glanced sidelong at him and managed a smile. "Regular renaissance man."

"He just likes it cause of Jane," said Loki.

Thor whipped around and threw his empty coffee cup in his brother's face. "Shut up!"

Hela glanced in the mirror at Loki, who sat with his knees pulled up to his chest to support his phone. She raised her eyebrows. "Who's Jane?"

"A girl from school."

"A friend," Thor said more aggressively. He fished in his bag, whipped out headphones, and slumped down to listen to music. He could make himself surprisingly small.

The highway didn't take them through Death Valley, but Hela was pretty sure she could see it out her left window, and even with the AC running it was hot as hell. Loki peeled off his t-shirt and dunked the whole thing in the cooler to wet it with the melted ice before shimmying back into it and pulling out a handful of ice for Fenris to lick.

In Vegas, they grabbed In-N-Out 2x2 burgers and shakes, and Hela refused to detour down the Strip however hard the boys wheedled and begged. Then they turned north into Utah, the desert fading to red rocks, then plains, then green stretches that climbed higher and higher until they were driving in mountains, and the further north they went the lower the temperature came until they could stop blasting the AC. Loki and Thor passed in and out of consciousness, stirring only for the occasional bathroom break or to read or watch videos on their phones or to just stare into the distance. Fenris hopped from the seat to the floor and tipped his water dish twice before he finally gave up and laid down with his chin on Loki's knee.

Around seven they entered Provo, a suburb city at the base of snow-capped mountains, Hela cruise-controlled down the six-lane highway, keeping up with traffic. She glanced in the mirror. "Hey, Loki."

He pulled off his headphones and looked up. "Yeah?"

"Wanna call your mom? Let her know we're going to stop soon."

Hela glanced down at the speedometer and noticed the check engine light glowing on the dash.

Thor pulled off his headphones and shot her a worried sidelong glance. "Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?"

"Like… like burning?" Another look.

Hela sniffed. Something did smell, like burning and smoke. She looked at the car ahead of them, an old rusted clanker. Was it what smelled? Was it her car? Eyeing the dashboard again, she slowed down and moved over a lane. White smoke bubbled from under the hood. Her hood.

Thor jerked back in his seat. Hela slammed on the brakes, and they pitched forward, seatbelt biting into her shoulder and knocking the breath out of her, and Loki and Fenris yelped. White-knuckled on the wheel, she moved over another two lanes and pulled onto the wide shoulder, close to the cement barrier and far from the screaming traffic.

Hela grabbed her purse and threw open her door. "Out. Out, out, out!"

They sprang out of the car and scrambled a safe distance up the road. Or at least, what she thought was a safe distance. Cars didn't actually explode like on TV right?

"Is everybody okay?" She half-looked at the boys, half-watched the car.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so." Thor had the back of his brother's shirt balled in his fist, ready to spring away should the car burst into flames.

Loki wiggled free and backed up a couple more steps, phone out and recording. "Mom is not gonna believe this."

"Mom is going to have a fit." Hela snapped her fingers and pointed to the ground beside her. "Fenris, here."

Barking, the dog sprinted back and slid into her leg, almost knocking her over. Hela rubbed his head to steady herself. What a disaster. It was day one, and they still had a thousand miles left; how was she supposed to get to Chicago now?

Eloquent to the last, Thor put his hands on his hips and looked over the smoking car. "Well, shit."

Back again! Infinity War was rough, guys, but I'm back, and gosh darn it, these disaster children are getting a happy ending. Thank you all for reading and waiting for the next chapter. Your reviews are amazing!

Happy belated birthday to ERJasandrea13!


	10. The One Where They Try Spray Painting

Eloquent to the last, Thor put his hands on his hips and looked over the smoking car. "Well, shit."

Hela threw him an exasperated look but flipped open her purse and dug around for her insurance card. She'd never used it, but it apparently had some kind of roadside assistance for when her stupid car decided to pull a stunt like this. She'd driven the thing in LA traffic for years, and it picked now to erupt?

Past the smoking car zoomed dozens of cars, vans, and semis, all trucking to who knew where. Fenris barked at them and bounced back and forth on his toes like he couldn't believe he was free from the car, and Loki stopped recording and started typing.

Hela leveled a finger at him. "Do not sent that to your mother."

He stuffed his phone in his pocket and shook his head adamantly. "Didn't."

"Good."

Thor strode past her with an old board swinging from his hand like a bat, heading for the car.

"What are you doing? Don't get to close."

Thor stopped a few feet from the car and brandished his 2x4 like he would club the smoking mess if it made a wrong move. "Nah, I'll be careful."

With an exasperated sigh, Hela glanced at her phone. It was almost seven thirty at night and eighty-two degrees out. Much cooler than the desert they'd been driving through, but still hot enough to be annoying. Weren't the mountains supposed to be cooler?

Hela fished her insurance card out of her purse and flipped it back and forth, scanning for the customer service number when her own phone started buzzing in her hand. Frigga's name light up the screen in white letters and a default silhouette icon. She glared at Loki—who was most certainly not making eye contact—and answered. "Hi, Frigga."

"Are you okay? I just got Loki's video."

Hela held the phone away from her ear as Frigga spieled through her concerned questions, voice pitched just a bit too high. Once she paused, Hela held the phone back up and said, "We're all fine. I just need to get the car to the shop, and I'm sure we'll be back on the road in no time."

BANG.

Hela leapt halfway out of her skin and whipped around. Thor stood well away from the car with the 2x4 over one shoulder like a baseball bat, and there was a noticeable dent in the front fender.

"Thor, what the hell?"

"It's fine." Thor smiled, one eye squinted shut against the sun, and he raised a hand in acknowledgment. "Just making sure it wasn't gonna explode."

Hela bit back a curse. She always imagined her delinquent college adventures or some great business scandal would be the only way she'd end up in jail, but fratricide on the shoulder of I-15 was looking more and more the likely culprit.

"Helen? What's going on?"

"Nothing. We're fine." Hela held the phone down. "Thor, I swear, if you don't get away from that car, there won't be anything left for your parents to fight over."

Thor tapped the car hood with his board, then used it to pushed up the hood and vent all the smoke while staying well back. "It's okay. I took a shop class."

Hela threw a hand in the air and looked at Loki. "Oh, he took a shop class. Of course. That fixes everything."

The black-haired boy held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Hey, I'm listening."

"Frigga, why don't you book us a hotel? I'll get on the phone with roadside assistance and…"

"Hey, lady. Need some help?"

Hela spun around. Parked in front of her car was a tow truck with a red bush-bearded man coming around the front.

"Oh, thank God. Frigga, there's a tow truck. I have to go. Book the hotel and text one of the kids."

"Helen—"

"Bye." She hung up and passed the phone back to Loki. "Text your mom."

"Kay."

Bright and early the next morning, Hela and the boys went to the nearest mechanic and loitered in the lobby for two hours before the mechanic appeared. Now Hela stared at him, an entirely average looking man with a clipboard and axle grease under his nails. If he swapped his jumpsuit out for a suit and tie, he would look like any of the business clients she teleconferenced with. He was certainly irritating enough, ticking down his list of everything catastrophically wrong with her car, tapping every reason she wasn't hurtling down the highway towards Minneapolis.

She gripped her Styrofoam cup of complementary, lukewarm coffee tighter. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Wish I was, ma'am." He gestured to the bustling garage with his clipboard. "Well, we've got a blown head gasket and a pretty square dent in the front fender."

Thor. Hela sighed and shot a look at the boys over in the waiting area—Loki playing video games in the kids' corner and his delinquent, fender-bending brother shoveling sugar packets into a Styrofoam cup. She sighed again. "It doesn't need to be pretty. How long is that going to take to fix, and how much is it going to cost me?"

"Well it isn't going to be cheap, unfortunately, but once we have the parts, we can get you fixed up and back on the road."

"Wait, wait." She held up her had. "You don't have the parts?"

He shrugged. "I'll get in touch with our sister shop here in town and see what they've got. Probably get you back on the road by tomorrow morning."

Hela clenched the cheap cup in her hand. She checked all the nearby airports—no seats on any planes for another three days, so this car was her one shot to Chicago on time. Tepid coffee burst over her fist and pooled on the floor, but she didn't flinch. The mechanic jumped, eyes wide.

She picked a napkin off the table and wiped the lukewarm liquid from her hand, dropped it on the floor, and mopped it up with her boot. "Fine. Whatever you need to do."

He gestured to the brown and russet waiting area. "You're welcome to wait. Otherwise, we have a shuttle that can take you and your kids to shop and maybe grab lunch."

"They're not my kids," Hela said, almost a reflex at this point.

The mechanic didn't react, so Hela glanced back at the boys. Thor had wandered away from the Judge Judy reruns in favor of the free coffee, where he was now pouring six sweetener packets into a Styrofoam cup. In the kids' space, a round rug in the corner with a TV, some books, and a wooden train set, Loki slouched in a bungee chair with Fenris curled sullenly under his feet. He held a video game control almost under his chin as he lazily pushed the joystick back and forth. They'd been quiet for a while, but she had no idea how much longer that would last.

Hela glanced back at the mechanic and his clipboard. "How do we catch the shuttle?"

"I can have it out front for you in about ten minutes."

"Wonderful." She spun on her heel and strode over to the boys. "We're going to lunch."

Thor slid the empty sugar packets into the garbage and chugged the whole cup of his super coffee in about four swallows. He was going to be insufferable in about twenty minutes.

"How much sugar did you dump in that?"

"It's like airport coffee; it's the only way I can drink it."

"You're both addicts."

He winged his cup into the garbage. "I don't tell you how to live your life."

Hela rolled her eyes and waved at Loki. "Let's go."

He sighed and turned the game off, then stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled over gripping Fenris' harness and a fair amount of scruff. The dog needed a haircut. And honestly, so did the boys. If they ever made it back to Minnesota, maybe Frigga could arrange that.

The three of them walked outside and climbed into the shuttle van that bussed them a few streets down to the Original Pancake House where a waiter set them up at an outdoor table with an umbrella. In the shade under the table, Fenris lolled and whined, so Loki grabbed his water glass and set the whole thing on the cement. The dog down the water in two slobbery tongue laps, and Loki put his glass back on the table for the waiter to refill.

Thor wrinkled his nose. "That's gross."

"He's thirsty."

"Somebody else is gonna have to drink out of that. You could have asked for a doggy bowl or a to go box or something. Ew."

What the boys decided to police each other on felt random to Hela, but at least she wasn't the one yelling at him. The waiter returned with food, and the slobbered cup did get refilled to Thor and Hela's chagrin. Thor whipped out his phone, probably to text all eighty of his friends, and Loki did the same, probably updating his mom since Frigga wasn't texting her in a panic every forty minutes.

Halfway into their meal, Hela's phone buzzed, and with a groan she answered.

"Sorry, ma'am." It was the mechanic. "I called all the shops in town. We'll have to order them from San Francisco, which will probably add three to five days—"

"Five days? I just drove here from L.A. in one."

"That's quite a drive." He sounded impressed. "But uh, that's probably why the engine is looking like it is. The more we look, the worse it is. Even with expedited shipping, FedEx only goes so fast, ma'am, and we do have to install the parts when they get here."

"It's fine. Just get it done as fast as you can."

"Please."

Hela whipped her head to Loki, who was already back to shoveling his Nutella crepes in his mouth, so she sighed. "Please. How much is all this going to cost me?"

"You're probably looking at upwards of a few thousand."

Groaning, Hela covered her face with one hand. "And how long is it going to take?"

"Hate to tell you this, but your car is going to be undrivable for at least a week."

Groaning, Hela covered her face with one hand. "Okay. Okay, I'll... call you back."

"We'll wait to hear from you." He hung up and left Hela to stew.

She slammed her phone on the table, shaking plates and silverware, and she growled and stabbed her apple pancake with more vitriol than it probably deserved. A tine caught one apple bit that burst and oozed.

"So…" Loki tapped at his plate. "Are we gonna make it home?"

She dropped her fork and ran her hand over her face. "I don't know honestly. There's no plane tickets, my car is going to cost a million dollars to fix, and we're not going anywhere for a week. Why don't I just buy a new car at this point?"

"Why don't you?" Thor took a swig of orange juice.

"Why don't I what?"

"Buy a new car. It would be faster." The kid wiped his mouth—on a napkin, thank God. She'd half expected him to use his sleeve.

"Sure. Do you have any idea how much a car costs?"

"Fifteen hundred bucks?"

Hela snorted. "A lot more than that."

He pointed over her shoulder across the street. She turned in her seat and followed his pointing to the ugliest car she'd ever seen. It was a bright orange hippie van, dented and fender bent, and across the dirty windshield in pink spray paint was written "$1,500" and a phone number. Her jaw dropped and she looked back at the boys who were watching her expectantly. Loki stuffed an entire crepe into his mouth and chewed, unaware of the chocolate smear on his cheek. Waiting. They were actually serious.

She pushed her chair back, and it shrieked. "Absolutely not."

"Aww, come on. It would be awesome."

"Maybe for the five miles we get down the road before the doors fall off. There's gotta be something wrong with it."

Shrugging, Thor stuffed another piece of bacon in his mouth and mumbled around it. "Well, if it runs, it's better than whatever's in the shop."

He had a point. If her car wouldn't run, then they'd never get it out of the garage, let alone all the way to Minnesota and Chicago. The next thing she knew, she was across the street, looking at the wheeled monstrosity. If she thought it was ugly at a distance, it was absolutely florescent up close. The fenders and doors were all intact, but there was some definite rust around the handles and the wheel well. She sneered. "It looks like a piece of garbage."

Unfortunately, Thor had the gall to look excited as he circled it. "It looks like an apocalypse van. Like, throw some metal bars on the window and bam—zombie proof."

"There are countries newer than this van. Is it even safe to drive?"

Thor kicked the fender. "Let's call and find out."

"Don't touch things that don't belong to you. And what am I supposed to do with it once we get back to Minnesota?"

"I'll keep it. I'm getting my license in a couple years; it can be my first car."

Loki's eyes got wide at that, like he hadn't considered his brother behind the wheel of a car, but Hela snorted and raised her eyebrows at Fenris, who just looked back at her with a bored, mournful expression. She looked back to the blond. "You want this hunk of garbage?"

"Well, I'll give it a paint job so it doesn't look like a Cheeto. And all my friends would fit."

Hela rolled her eyes, but she wasn't seeing all that many options. So she called the number and got the owner to agree to have a mechanic look it over before purchase. "These old cars are ugly, but they last. It'll get you where you need to go," said the mechanic back at the shop. That and, "You're brave, lady. I'll give you that much." But it ran, and at this point, that was what mattered.

The inside of the van was only slightly more tolerable. The driver and front passenger seats were peeling faux leather, and in the back, blue-and-silver-checked benches that somehow collapsed into a bed. Green fabric curtained the windows, and the whole thing smelled like old, hot leather and pinewood from the faded air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. Maybe somebody—or a couple somebodies—had tried to renovate it and abandoned it mid-project.

It was, as Loki pointed out, a hot mess.

But it had seatbelts, so she supposed that was a plus.

They drove back to their hotel, packed their stuff, and checked out. Thor and Fenris sprawled out in the backseat—"more leg room"—and Loki took shotgun. They hadn't been on the freeway more than fifteen minutes before Hela realized she couldn't drive another mile with the revolting orange frame staining her peripheral vision. For looking like a traffic cone, it was a real safety hazard. With a disgusted sigh, she waved a hand at Loki. "Map me to the nearest Walmart."

He pulled an earbud out, backed out of his texting, and started typing on his phone. "Uh, okay. Take the next exit."

They pulled off the freeway and wound down a convoluted frontage road to a super Walmart. The inside was dim and fluorescent and gave the feeling of being in an entirely different dimension. The boys vanished, but she grabbed some more bread and peanut butter then rolled her sticky-wheeled cart to the back aisles until she found paint. There she grabbed a couple masks, rollers, painting tape, a bucket of green auto paint, and a few cans of spray paint. If she had to drive Thor's apocalypse van across three states, then it would look half decent.

She found the boys in the self-checkout aisle with a twelve pack of Dr. Pepper, a family sized bag of Cheetos, and a box of granola bars.

In the parking lot, Hela pulled around the back and handed out masked and rollers. "Make sure you cover all the orange, for my sanity's sake."

Thor snapped his mask on and stripped off his shirt.

"Thor Blake, I swear to God, if you take off your pants I will leave you in this parking lot."

Thor snorted. Loki had already grabbed his brother's shirt off the ground and tied it around his head to protect his hair. Then he grabbed a roller. "Let's do this."

They attacked the ugly paint, and in twenty minutes had covered the van in a much more tasteful green. Then Hela grabbed a can of black spray paint and took it to the sides, sketching wicked looking lines that spiked and branched across the door and jutted across the frame in striking relief.

Thor and Loki gapped at her. "How did you do that?"

She smirked. "You think you're the first delinquent Odin ever raised?"

She and Thor gathered up the used supplies and walked them to the nearest trash can, only to come back to Loki finishing up his own addition to the paint job:

RAGNAROK

Thor wrinkled his nose. "What the heck is that?"

"End of the world. It's our apocalypse van, and it sounds cool."

"It's dumb."

Loki opened his mouth to tell, but Hela held up a hand. "Fine. Call it whatever you want; I honestly don't care as long as it runs."

Thor and Loki started arguing, but she hopped in the front seat and turned the key. The engine groaned and turned over, but the boys kept yelling at each other.

"You're stupid."

"No, you're stupid."

And Hela leaned back for another long drive.


	11. The One With Powdered Donuts

Day three dawned early on their Rawlins, Wyoming Super 8. Three days was an ungodly amount of time on the road. The bleary-eyed trio wandered through breakfast and into the car for another driving stint, but the bleariness gave way to crankiness. As Mom would say, "Some nerves were starting to fray."

His phone said they were a solid fourteen hours from home, but Hela was determined to make the rest of the trip in one day. It was kind of crazy, and when he'd texted Mom, she'd tried to let him down gently that no, he probably wouldn't be home in his own bed.

He was sick of the van. It was hot, and the backseat smelled like Fenris and his kibble, and Thor refused to give up the front seat. He was out of Gravity Falls episodes, sick of skipping through his music library, and out of patience. He tugged his headphones off and spent the next four hours picking fights with Thor until Loki got up on his knees and shoved his shoulder between the front seats.

"You suck!"

Thor twisted and got his face next to Loki's. "You suck!"

"Hey. Hey!" Hela shoved Thor back down in his seat and swerved a little on the road before grabbing the wheel with both hands. "Sit down."

The car swerved back into the lane, and Hela growled and pushed the hair out of her face. "We are just tired—" She spat the word out. "—from sitting so long. I'm going to pull over at the next stop, and you two are going to chill out."

Loki stuck his tongue out at the back of Thor's head, but his older brother saw in the mirror and whipped around. Loki squeaked and lunged back.

At the next town, Hela pulled off into a tiny gas station and threw the van violently into park, and the brothers burst from the vehicle. Loki took a deep whiff of gasoline and farm, wrinkling his nose. After baking in the desert for so long, the green countryside felt cold, so he fished his hoodie out of his bag and wriggled into it.

Fenris headbutted his back, but the boy pushed him back inside and shut the door. "No. You stay."

"Hey. Where do you think you're going?"

The boys spun around. In front of the van stood Hela, holding up a piece of red plastic. Mom's card. Rats.

"Uh, for a drink?"

"And what, you were just going to leave this in the parking lot?" Her lips pressed together in an irritated line.

A little red around the ears, Thor stalked back and snatched the card from her hand. She watched him walk back to Loki then rolled her eyes and returned to pumping gas. Inside Loki looked over the shelves of granola and candy bars, but he didn't want any of those. He wandered around the corner and down the next aisle. Beef jerky, chips, powdered donuts. Mom bought him powdered donuts sometimes—when he got the flu and missed school for like a week, when she first told them she and Dad were getting divorced.

It had been a garbage day, and he wanted some.

Thor stood between the wall of drinks and the row of emergency road trip supplies—nail clippers, duct tape, air fresheners, things like that—when Loki came down the aisle and held up the white paper bag.

"Hey."

Thor kept texting.

With one finger, Loki pushed his shoulder, and Thor slapped his arm away and glared. "Bug off."

Loki held the donuts in his brother's face. "I want these."

"No." Thor shoved the bag away, turned his back, and resumed texting.

"I said I want the donuts."

"And I said no."

"You're not my mom."

"Good."

Loki shoved his brother, who stumbled forward then whipped around. With a yelp, Loki sprinted to the bathroom and slammed the door, which shuddered and banged as Thor pounded on the other side.

The older boy yelled, "You suck."

"You suck," Loki hollered back.

No answer. His brother might have already walked away, but it wouldn't hurt to wait a little bit. They hadn't fought-fought in a while—trying to be good like Mom asked—but Loki didn't want to get decked in a Nebraska gas station, that seemed like a lame way to die, so he'd give it a couple minutes. His phone was in his hoodie pocket, so he could call for help if he needed. Even though he wasn't sure if Hela would come bail him out at this point.

He looked around the bathroom to take stock of his hiding place. It was old, obnoxiously red and white with newspaper clippings of some wrestler dude, and aside from the overflowing trashcan pretty clean. A sink, an off-white toilet, and a roll of paper towels just sitting on the toilet tank. The small room reeked of Febreeze, but it didn't smell like the bathroom on the beach they sometimes visited on weekends, so it would do.

Still clutched his hand was the bag of powdered donuts, a little flat from all the swinging around, but still sealed, still obnoxiously, deliciously sugared. No way Thor was going to buy it for him now. After all the yelling the van, Hela definitely wouldn't. She seemed like she could stay P.O'ed for a while. Like, years.

Loki sighed and pulled out his phone. No messages from Mom in the four and a half minutes since he'd last checked. Again he looked at the bag. He could open the bag and just eat them all here in the bathroom, and then somebody would have to pay for it.

He squatted against the wall and unfolded the top of the bag. By the fourth or fifth one, the flaw in his plan dawned on him. There were like twenty donuts in here. No way he was gonna eat them all.

Screw it. He crumpled up the bag and stuffed it up his hoodie. Then he opened the door and trudged out into the gas station where Hela was paying for gas.

"Hey, Hela."

"What?" She took a receipt from the bored-looking teen behind the counter, glanced at the paper, then stuffed it in her pocket.

He thought about the half-full bag under his shirt. Everybody thought he couldn't do anything. Screw them, he could take care of himself. "Nothin'."

"Then let's go. If we don't stop, we can make it to your mom's house tonight."

Finally. He shuffled after her out to the car, shoulders hunched and elbows out to hide the weird bulge under his shirt. Thor was already in the front seat, slumped down with his feet up on the dashboard. Hela banged a fist on the hood, and the blond jumped and jerked his feet down.

"Thank you."

Loki crawled into the backseat, where Fenris shoved a long, wet nose into the kid's chest, sniffing and nosing for the opened bag. Loki pushed the dog away. "No. No, stop it." He settled in his seat and buckled up and pushed Fenris again. "You're gonna get me in trouble."

They pulled back onto the highway. Loki plugged his phone in to charge and slouched in his seat while the stupid donuts burned a hole in the sweater that was getting hotter and hotter, and dumb Fenris kept sniffing him and trying to nose into his shirt for food.

After an hour, Loki pulled out the bag and opened it as much as he could without crinkling it too loud and stuffed a body-warmed donut into his mouth. It wasn't as good—crumby, a little sticky, a pain to chew.

Hela glanced in the mirror then did a double take, then a triple take where she locked eyes with him in the mirror, and her eyebrows lowered in a dark scowl. "Where did you get those?"

There was something in her voice that made Loki want to curl in on himself, but Thor snickered. He hated that. He hated when Thor laughed at him, and he hated the way Hela was looking at him. He stuck out his chin and licked powdered sugar from between his fingers. "From the gas station."

"I mean how did you pay for them?"

He stuffed another one in his mouth and mumbled around it. He needed something to drink. "I can have donuts if I want."

She glanced at the road, adjusted the wheel, and nailed him again with a glare as dark as any Dad had ever worn.

"The card is in my wallet, kid. How did you pay for those donuts?"

He stuffed two more donuts in his mouth, but he couldn't quite close his jaw all the way. They tasted kind of chalky even as he struggled to chew. Thor had stopped laughing.

"Loki. Did you steal those?"

It wasn't a question. Loki tried to swallow, but the cake and powdered sugar had taken all the moisture from his mouth. Hela stared dead ahead, and painful silence swallowed the van. Loki choked down the donut and dropped the nearly empty bag on the ground, and Fenris leapt on it and buried his head in the white paper, his entire backside shaking from his tail. Five minutes later, Hela jerked the wheel, and the van screamed down an exit ramp, down a little side road, and to a stop on the narrow gravel shoulder.

Fenris bounced to his feet, ready to be let out again, but Loki threw open the side door, skidded down the steep, wet-grassed embankment and chucked the bag as far as he could over the wire fence into the adjacent field. The maybe two and a half donuts left carried it a little way into the waist-high plants.

Two doors slammed. He whipped around, and Hela was storming around the front of the van, coming up behind Thor. The older boy was staring at him in confusion, but his sister elbowed past him and slid down the hill. A little freaked out by how fast she was coming, Loki hunched his shoulders and backed up a step. She glared down at him, the crease of her brow familiar and frightening. She was really tall.

Hela growled. "Loki, you can't just steal random shit. What the hell were you thinking?"

He tried to glare back. "You can't prove I stole anything."

She gestured wildly to the field where she's just watched him chuck the paper bag and gave him an exasperated, disbelieving expression. "How stupid do you think I am?"

Thor skidded down the embankment and got between his siblings. "Hey, you don't have to yell at him."

The interruption didn't faze Hela in the least. "Why weren't you watching him, hot shot?"

"I'm not his dad. It's not my job."

"I'm not your mom, but I'm busing you across the entire country. A little help would be nice."

"Fine, I'll just sit on him for the rest of the drive. That oughta help."

"Watch the lip."

Thor was tall but not quite tall enough to look Hela square in the eye. Beet red, he clenched his fists, and Loki was half scared Thor would take a swing at her. "You're not my mom!"

"You're damn right I'm not." Hela stepped forward and forced him to back up to keep from getting pushed over. "And when we get to Minnesota, you're her problem. You'll never have to see me again."

"Fine! Leave. We don't need you anyway."

Loki slammed the side door shut, then slammed the front passenger's door closed and stomped around the van to crawl into the driver's seat—he wasn't quite tall enough to slide in—and shut the door behind him. Outside, his siblings were still yelling at each other.

He was sick of people yelling. They sucked. The van sucked. Everything sucked, and he wanted to go home. He grabbed his phone out of the back seat, tugged on his headphones, and locked the doors.

Hela froze when she heard the lock click. She and Thor whirled on the van just in time to see black hair disappearing beneath the passenger-side window. She scrambled up the embankment about as gracefully as a seal, the wet grass sliding out from under her boots. "Loki! Loki, you open this door."

He was slumped in the seat with his headphones on, rock music blaring loud enough to hear through the glass. Her phone was right there, stuck to the dashboard and useless. Still blasting his music, Loki pointedly did not look up.

She pounded her palm on the window. "Loki! Loki, open this door right now or I swear—"

"Or what?" Thor yelled. "If you hate us so much, why don't you just leave! Leave like everybody else does."

Thor yelled incoherently, prompting Hela to turn around just in time to see him hurl something at the ground and stomp off along the fence. She threw up both her hands. "Where are you going?"

"Away from you! You suck." He stormed off.

It wasn't like there was anywhere the dumb kid could go. He'd be back. Hela banged on the glass a few more times and yanked on the handle, but Loki grabbed a blanket from the back seat and threw it over his head in a makeshift shield.

Hela yelled in frustration, dropped onto her butt on the gravel, and leaned against the van's side. This had to be one of the worst days she'd had in a long time.

She sat for a long time, vacantly watching the field grass undulate in the wind. Eventually, she stood back up and tossed her jacket on the hood. Inside, Loki was passed out on the backseat, pillow under his head and his headphones crooked awkwardly on his head.

"Loki." She rapped on the window. "Kid."

He smacked his lips and rolled over, tugging off his headphones and burying down into his pillow. She sighed and peered up the road, hand up to shade her eyes against the sun. She should probably go look for Thor. And her dog.

So she took off slid down the bank to whatever Thor had chucked on the ground and poked around for a second before finding a cranberry red plastic hammer that looked like it had been printed in her office. Stuffing it in her pocket, she ambled off in the direction he'd gone and walked for maybe twenty minutes before she spied him chucking shoulder gravel into a wheat field while Fenris bounded through the long stalks.

Hela dropped to the ground beside Thor and propped her elbows on her knees. "Enjoying the view?"

He didn't look at her. "You're a jerk."

"I'm sorry."

He grunted. "I guess it's a family thing."

"Unfortunately." She looked down at her hands. Why was she so bad at this? "You're… you were pretty upset back there. You wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Cool. I didn't want to talk about it either." She held out the plastic hammer. "You dropped this."

He glanced at it for a second before looking back out at the waving grass. "Don't want it."

She put it back in her pocket. "That's fine. You probably have enough on your plate without worrying about this dumb thing. School, hockey, friends…"

"Did life get easier? When you ran away?"

Ah. Hela took a deep breath and considered her options. Thor sounded pretty serious, more serious than she'd ever heard him, and there was a determined set to his jaw. It was too familiar, and she didn't like it on him. "Not really. I had to take care of myself by myself. There wasn't anyone else to lean on. Why? You thinking about running away?"

He picked up a rock and chucked it into the grass. "I don't know. I wouldn't have to worry anybody else."

"Who are you worried about?"

"I promised Loki I'd take care of us. But then he goes and does something dumb like this… What if Dad finds out?"

Hela snorted. "What, like I'm gonna tell him?"

"When Jane's parents got divorced, her dad took everything and left. Just disappeared. Her mom is working like all the time now."

Hela licked her lips. Jane was one of Thor's friends if she remembered right. "So… what? You think if Odin finds out about some stupid donuts, he's going to completely skip out on you and leave your mom to take care of everything?"

Thor shrugged, but his jaw clenched tighter, and he looked away.

"It's pretty cool of you to be worried about your mom and your brother. But if your dad decides to completely skip out over something as stupid as a three-dollar bag of plastic-flavored donuts, then he's doesn't deserve you guys. And I know I talk… a lot of smack about him, but maybe… maybe he isn't as big a jerk as I think he is.

"He left us in Phoenix by ourselves."

Hela snorted. "That's true. And Odin has screwed over a lot of people in his life, but I think whatever he does—even if I hate it—he does because he thinks it's what's best." She pulled up a blade of grass and twirled it in between her fingers, just so Thor wouldn't feel like she was staring at him. "Besides, your mom is a pretty resourceful woman. I bet she already has a plan."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. She has her wedding planning business, and she figured out how to get you and your brother home from halfway across the country. So I think she's more than capable of taking care of you and Loki by herself."

Thor exhaled a shaky breath and wiped at his face, and Hela, doing the kind thing for once in her life, pretended not to see. Once he wiped his nose and cleared his throat, she tossed the grass away. "And if everything goes completely south, you can come work for me."

He raised his head. "Really?"

"Sure." She smirked. "We need somebody to babysit the printer."

He glared at her, but most of the venom had gone out of it. She bumped her shoulder against his. "Come on. Let's go make sure Loki isn't cooking himself to death in the van. I don't want to explain that to your mom."

Thor snorted.

Together they walked back to the van with Fenris trotting behind. At the van, they saw a little tuft of black hair sticking up behind the steering wheel. Hela sighed. "What is he doing?"

"You ask me like I know things."

Hela shook her head and walked around to the glass. In the driver's seat sat Loki, or rather, laid Loki trying to hold down the pedal and turn the key at the same time, half hanging from the steering wheel. She wrapped on the glass, and he jumped and scrambled back to get his butt on the seat. When he saw Hela, relief flashed across his face, followed by a blanche of uncertainty. She gestured for him to open the door. He glanced round, spied Thor, then unlocked the door.

Hela opened the door, and tepid air reeking of beef jerky wafted out. She wrinkled her nose. "What are you doing?"

"Was gonna come find you," Loki mumbled. He slid out of the driver's seat and scooted away to pet Fenris. With a sigh, the oldest grabbed her phone from the dashboard. Four missed calls and three lost hours.

She tossed it in a cupholder and walked around the van to where the boys petted Fenris, who was more than happy to lap up the adoration. Thor was talking to him in a low voice, but Loki seemed entirely focused on petting the dog.

Hela stood still, not really hearing what the blond said to his little brother, but after a few minutes, the boys stepped back from the dog, and Loki raised his head. "Are we almost home?"

"Almost."

Thor threw open the passenger door. "Then let's get this show on the road. I got places to be."

They piled into the van, and Hela pulled back onto the road and followed it back to the highway. Then she took a deep breath. "Hey, Loki?"

He met her gaze in the rearview mirror but didn't speak.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you."

He looked away and slumped in his seat. Hela glanced at Thor, who shrugged. Well, there wasn't much more she could do except get these kids home. So she adjusted her grip on the wheel and merged back onto the freeway.


	12. The One With The Corn Field

After a wild afternoon by the side of the road, the siblings trucked down the highway. It was like all the static had gone out of the air after a storm.

Loki petted Fenris' head, absently smoothing the fur in one direction. Thor mostly stared out the window and turned the plastic hammer over and over in his hand, checked the map every once in a while even though the freeway had another hundred miles before they turned off.

They stopped at a little mom-and-pop diner for a late meal. They'd lost a lot of time messing around in the tall grass—there wasn't a chance they'd make it to Frigga's house even if they drove through the night, and Hela was getting sick of driving, sick the white dashes reflected in her sunglasses. She wanted to sleep in a real bed. Wash her clothes. She didn't even want to look at her hair at this point.

Across the table, Thor down his pot roast with a little less fervor than usual, and Loki poked at his spaghetti. He'd been unusually quiet the whole evening and avoided looking at Hela. He hadn't called his mom since it happened. Probably didn't want her to find out.

Hela stabbed her pot pie, mashing the pale crust into a soup of suspicious vegetables. She'd handled the whole thing like an idiot, but out of all her own teen delinquencies, stealing had never been one. Spray-painted walls, whiskey, driving too fast and getting home too late. All the screaming matches with the old man blurred in her head—they all ended with a banging screen door.

Hela sighed and took a bite of her pot pie. Too salty.

When they got out of the restaurant, the sun hid mostly behind the horizon, and dark purple and blue stretched over their heading.

"Are we almost there?"

Hela glanced at her phone and reloaded the map a couple times like that would shorten the distance to Frigga's house. It didn't. "We'll get as far as we can."

"Okay. Do you want me to text Mom and ask her to get us a hotel?"

"No, that's okay. Who knows, maybe I'll get a second wind and just drive all night."

Thor snorted. "That doesn't seem safe."

She shot him a tired glance, but it lacked the usual venom. "You weren't complaining when I picked your butt off the airport curb. Besides, I haven't had a normal sleep schedule in two weeks, I figure why start now?"

Thor repeated a vague approximation of her jab in a high-pitched voice before throwing open the side door and digging through his duffel bag.

Hela sighed and checked her phone. Still no panicked texts from Frigga, no emails from Adam or the office screaming that the sky was falling, no angry voicemails from Odin or his lawyers demanding they turn their apocalypse van around right this minute—that lured a small smile out of her. At this point, she'd rather drink kitchen grease than drive all the way back to California.

Loki snapped on Fenris' leash and ran him to the grass for a quick walk—Hela pursed her lips at that. Her dog followed after the little beanpole like a baby duck, and Loki leaned on the mutt and messed with him like they'd been playing since the cradle. Way too friendly. There were gonna be tears when she loaded Fenris back on a plane, and that was the last thing she wanted. But that would be Frigga's problem. Thank God, soon enough this would all be Friga's problem.

"Hey," Loki yelled. "Spit that out!" He dove for Fenris, but the dog jerked his head away, chomping away at who knew what. "Thor, help!"

Thor groaned and jogged across the parking lot. "Fenris, drop it."

Rubbing her forehead, Hela secured her sunglasses in her jacket breast pocket. She wasn't cut out for this parenting nonsense. The fact that she had been the adult in this wild triad for so long was hilarious, especially since everybody was—in the strictest sense possible—still alive. Emotionally traumatized for all time, probably, but alive.

At this point, she'd take a win where she got it.

So, still breathing, they all piled into the van and drove off into the dimming light. After about an hour, Loki unbuckled and popped the mattress out, throwing blankets and pillows this way and that as he bedded down for the night. He laid on his stomach, watching TV on his phone and petting Fenris' head absently.

They drove on for a couple more hours before Thor crawled into the back. Loki was out cold, facedown on his phone that shone into his hair and cast odd shadows on the ceiling. Thor pulled his brother's phone away, turned it off, and tossed it in a bag, any bag. Then he stretched out beside his brother, feet beside Loki's head and a pillow waded up in his arms. Pretty soon the snores of two boys filled the van, and Hela shook her head and adjusted the radio to quiet jazz.

She drove that way for a long time until her eyes went heavy. She glanced in the mirror and saw Loki and Thor passed out, limbs akimbo and mouths open, half curled around each other with a blanket tangled around them. In the floor, Fenris laid with his paws up in the air.

She tapped her phone, rubber banded to the dash, and it lit up with 1:37 in blocky white letters that hurt her eyes.

 _Ick_.

Turning down the radio, she cracked the window. Cold air rushed in, smelling like a farmyard, and she grimaced and rolled it shut again. Her hair was blown in her eyes, but she was more awake for now. So she blew the hair out of her eyes and adjusted her grip on the wheel.

After another fifteen minutes, she was having a hard time keeping her head up and her eyes open, so she pulled over to the side of the road and checked Google Maps for the nearest town with a hotel.

Another forty minutes. Damn. So much for getting to Frigga's house tonight.

So she drove until she found a dirt road and turned off, following the ruts in the gravel for another mile before she reached a turn out where she pulled over and parked. After throwing on the parking brake and locking all the doors, she crawled into the back, peeled down to her jeans and cami, and laid down on the unoccupied couch. Even though she had no idea if the woman was still awake, Hela shot her stepmother a text that they were stopping for the night.

Crickets and a quiet breeze whispered outside the solid metal walls, and overhead the plexiglass sunroof showed a black sky studded with more stars than she'd seen in a long time. Hela rolled onto her side, tucked on arm under her head, and closed her eyes. They were in the middle of nowhere; it was safe enough. Fenris chuffed and stirred, but then settled back down. He'd let her know if there were any problems.

She'd almost fallen asleep when a hesitant whisper cut through the dark: "Hela?"

Loki. She kept her eyes closed and gave a questioning sigh.

The mattress creaked, probably the thin boy rolling over. Then he was silent for a long time before he took a deep breath. "What's gonna happen?"

She frowned. "Hmm?"

"When we get home."

She snorted. "We're finally gonna have a decent night's sleep."

A long silence, and she thought he might have fallen asleep, but then he spoke again, his voice trembling: "Are you gonna tell Mom? About… about how bad I've been?"

Oh. She rolled over and peered through the dark for his face. The faint moonlight barely outlined his mussed hair and shoulder as he sat up on one elbow.

She shook her head. "No."

Silence.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

More silence. Neither of them moved.

"Okay, what else is bugging you?" Hela asked.

"You… do you… do you hate me?"

Hela scoffed. "You're like nine years old." She could almost hear him frown in indignation. "You're fine, kid. I've done too much dumb shit to be mad at you over some stupid donuts."

"Yeah?"

She laid her head back down and shifted to get comfortable. "Yeah, your mom can tell you all kinds of stories when we get you home."

"What kind of stories?"

"Hmm? Oh, you'll have to ask her."

He fell silent, and Hela shut her eyes.

"Are the lawyers gonna let us stay home?"

Oh. Okay, they weren't going to sleep anytime soon. She sat up, groaning. "Do you _want_ to stay home with your mom?"

Silence. A trembling breath.

Hela covered her face with one hand and rubbed her eyes. This was a disaster. She didn't know how to talk to kids, let alone to one going through what these two were. A divorce, shipped across the country to nowhere, trekking back across the country with an almost stranger. They'd be lucky if the boys only needed a couple months of therapy after this.

"Listen, Loki. Whatever you tell me stays in this van." She paused. "And I'll beat Thor up if I have to."

He giggled then paused. His shoulders slumped, and in the dark, he looked like a wilting cattail. "I… I wanna…"

"What do you want?"

"IwannastaywithMom."

She smiled. "Well, there you go. I'm sure your mom and Heimdall will make sure it stays that way."

"You don't hate me?"

"We literally just went over this."

"Well, do you?"

"Would I have driven you across the country if I hated your guts?"

"I think Dad hates me." His voice trembled, and the silhouette of him shivered.

Hela rubbed her temples, feeling the beings of an exhaustion headache coming on. She wanted to tell him that it wasn't true, that Odin would love him no matter what happened with the divorce or where the kind went in life, but...

Odin hated her, or he was embarrassed. Not that there was much difference. She'd stopped losing sleep over it a long time ago, but Loki has his whole life ahead of him—a life that might include his dad for a long time. Maybe it would be a kindness to lie. To speak with authority and certainty. But she didn't _know_ , any more than she'd ever known what went on inside that old man's head, and it felt cruel to offer Loki that.

Finally, she spoke: "Why would he hate you? You're just a kid."

Loki was definitely crying now. "I told the judge I wanted to stay with Mom."

Oh.

"It's his fault!" He hurled his pillow against the front window. "He left us! And now he wants to take us away from Mom, but he doesn't love me, he just loves Thor." He hung his head and sobbed. "It's my fault."

Hela stared helplessly at him. "It's not your fault."

"Yes, it is. We got stuck in Phoenix and you had to come get us because Dad was mad at me. If I hadn't picked Mom, then maybe they would still get back together. Maybe… maybe…" He sobbed and pulled his knees up to his chest.

Hela sat all the way up and hopped from her couch to the mattress, and it sagged under her. She put an arm around his shoulders and gingerly pulled him against her side. He buried his face in her side, smearing tears on her cami and skin.

She hugged him awkwardly. "Hey. Listen to me. None of this is on you. You're just a kid. A smart kid, but it's not your job to make your parents or anybody else happy or together or whatever crap you've convinced yourself you got to do."

Shaking, Loki wrapped his arms around her and cried into her shoulder. "I wanna go home."

"I know."

He cried, and she held him, arms wrapped around his tiny, shaking frame. He was so small. She wasn't equipped for this.

She set her chin on top of his head. "And I know I talk smack about your dad. A lot. But I do think your dad really does love you, even if he's never figured out how to say it. And even though he and your mom couldn't work it out doesn't mean they're going to drop you by the side of the road."

Loki dragged a ragged breath. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Your mom loves you, and if you want to stay with her, she and Heimdall will figure out a way for that to happen."

"O… okay."

She hugged him, awkwardly, tightly. "And I guess if everything really hits the fan, you can run away and live in LA with me."

It occurred to her that she should stop offering her apartment as a safe house if she ever wanted to sleep in peace again, but—holding this dumb, crying, scared kid—she realized she didn't mind.

On the bed, Thor shifted a little, and Hela knew he was wide awake and pretending desperately not to be. Thankfully, Loki was too distracted whipping his nose on his t-shirt hem to notice.

She didn't know

"Go to sleep, okay? And tomorrow you'll be back home. And you'll see your mom, and I can finally take a decent shower..."

Loki laughed and wiped his nose on his wrist. Hela smiled and let him go, and he sat up and crawled back onto the bed where Thor pretended to sleep. He snuck back under his blanket and laid down. Yawning, Hela laid down and curled up on her side.

"Hey, Hela?"

"Hmm?"

"We'll be home tomorrow, right?"

She snorted. "We better be."

Loki sniffed, teary and laughing, then he settled back down and his breathing evened out into the slow deep breaths of sleep.

"Pssst."

Thor.

She was never going to get to sleep. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

She grabbed her jacket off the floor and lobbed it at him, not so hard it would hurt, but enough to get it over Loki's head. "Go to sleep."

He snickered. "Jerk."

"Brat." Hela laid down and settled into the lumpy couch in the middle of a stranger's corn field for a few hours of rest.


	13. The One Where There's A Qualified Adult

Hela woke to the early sun in her eyes. An ungodly hour, really, and not nearly enough sleep. But she hauled herself up and crawled into the front seat and pulled back onto the highway to finish the last few hours of their drive. About an hour later, the boys woke up and made a halfhearted attempt at packing up their stuff. They all smelled a little, but at least nobody had thrown up.

Loki and Thor stared at the highest point in Iowa as they drove past it. They stopped once to give Fenris a runaround and fill gas yet again, then pushed through the last few hours of driving, watching the landscape turn from fields to tree-dotted suburbs to cityscape. After fighting traffic for a little while, they turned into an upscale neighborhood where the houses had big, pristine yards and lush trees and big front porches.

There was so much grass. And not a palm tree in sight.

Their mobile monstrosity didn't exactly match the upscale aesthetic. She hoped Frigga was prepared for weird looks and nosy questions from the neighbors. If Mrs. Lars still lived across the street with her flat-faced pug, the police would probably be called by day's end. Mrs. Lars, gotta protect the neighborhood from spray-paint harbingers of doom. Hela pursed her lips. Maybe she'd go buy a pack of cigarettes and throw the butts on her lawn for old time's sake.

As Hela pulled into the driveway of a big yellow house with white trim and a front yard full of plants. Loki sat bolt upright and plastered his face to the window, visibly shaking

"Take a deep breath, kid, before you pass out."

Loki just unbuckled his seat belt and rocked in his seat. Thor shoved forward, his shoulders caught on the seats, and he leaned on the horn. Beeeeeeeeeee—

Hela shot him an exasperated look. "Come on, man."

He threw her a shit-eating grin and eased off the horn.

"You're lucky we're here." Hela threw the van into park.

The front door flew open, and out came Frigga. Thor threw open the side van, and the two boys burst from the vehicle screaming, "MOM!"

Frigga ran down the sidewalk and caught the boys in her arms, staggering back from the force of impact. She held them close and showered them in kisses. Barking, Fenris bounded around them. Hela felt the tension drain out her shoulders at the sight of her stepmom holding the boys. Finally, a qualified adult to hand this disaster off to.

She climbed out of the van and threw open the back to grab bags. Then she trudged up the walk, a couple of poorly packed duffel bags in hand. She could do laundry, take a hot shower. She hadn't felt clean in what must have been a thousand years, and honestly, it was disgusting. At least nobody had thrown up during the trip, eating in roadside diners and out of sketchy gas stations. Oh, they had dodged a bullet there, and she hadn't realized it until now.

Frigga looked up from the boys, and her wide smile and crinkling eyes fell on Hela. "Helen!"

"Frigga, thank God."

Her step-mother let the boys go and took Hela into a crushing hug. Surprised, Hela took it like a wooden board, but Frigga didn't seem to mind. "Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Thank you so much."

"You're welcome."

The older woman released her from the hug and leaned back, and Hela could see the soft grey about Frigga's temples, hidden in the blonde, and such a genuine light in her eyes that it caught the younger woman off guard.

"Come in. Come in." Frigga took the duffel bag from Hela's hands and headed for the front door. "You must all be exhausted."

Loki and Thor hovered around their mother, talking over top of each other and jostling each other like puppies as they followed her up the front steps. She put her arms around their shoulders and laughed and kissed them atop their greasy crowns, and Hela trailed a few paces behind.

Inside, the front hall was pretty much what she remembered—dark wood, bright crisp paint that looked recently done, not a coat off its hook or shoe out of place. She did wonder Frigga had always been a stress cleaner, and she'd had some late nights in the past couple weeks, so of course it was spotless. But if her apartment and van were any indication, it wasn't going to stay spotless much longer. Though, compared to her apartment, the house was massive—maybe it would last longer.

To the right, the kitchen and dining room, to the left the living room, all equally immaculate and open and bright. Even with that big fireplace, this place had to be a pain to heat in the winter. All those windows. The walls were a different shade of brown though, and the hole under the window she'd put there in a heated fight three years ago was gone.

Hela dropped her duffel bags on the ground, and Fenris zoomed past her into the house, nails clicking on the floorboards. She groaned. "Fenris! Come."

He whizzed past, and she grabbed at him, but his fur slipped between her fingers and he disappeared on another lap around the house like a creature possessed.

"Fenris!"

"It's all right," said Frigga. "I have two boys; there's nothing in reach he can break too badly." She ushered the boys inside and shut the door. "Please, come in, sit down. Boys, are you hungry? Helen?"

"I'm starving," Thor said. He kicked off his shoes and bee-lined for the kitchen.

Hela peeled off her boots—they felt half-grafted to her socks, and she peeled those off too. Disgusting.

She followed Loki and Frigga into the kitchen where Thor was halfway in the fridge.

Hela looked around. The kitchen had been repainted a calming shade of blue and the cabinets re-stained, but it was mostly the same as when she'd moved out. She pulled out a bar stool and propped her elbows on the island but didn't sit down. "See you replaced the screen door."

Frigga smiled. "Well, it got a lot of use."

A kind way of saying it had been banging and slammed so many times that it had holes in the wire mesh.

"This one's nicer."

"Thank you. Do you want to sit down? You must be exhausted."

"Thanks, but I never want to sit down again."

Frigga laughed, nudged her eldest son aside, and produced some Tupperware out of the fridge and then some plates and forks from the cabinets. "I made lasagna last night." She gestured to the stairs. "If you want to sleep, your old room is open. Loki told me you were driving pretty late."

"Actually, sleep sounds fantastic." Hela slid the bar stool back in and headed to the front door to grab some more bags from the van, but Frigga called out from the kitchen, "No, no. You rest, and the boys and I will bring the bags in. I'll bring your things up to your room in a little bit."

Hela pursed her lips and bobbed her head a little awkwardly. "All right. I'll see you I while, I guess."

Hela tramped upstairs—stairs where the third step from the top didn't squeak anymore—and she turned down a hall full of gold-framed photos. Hung on the walls were all the pictures she had ignored. Glossy photos of family vacations, Thor in hockey gear, Loki with a spelling bee ribbon. Thor with a science project, Loki riding on Odin's shoulders in some city Hela didn't recognize. Odin, Frigga, and the boys all in life vests and smiling in front of a lake.

There were so many different places in the photos, more and more grey on the parents' heads. They had lived an entire life. They looked happy.

She shuffled past them. The first door on her left was a bathroom, clean and white and brown. Thank God, she couldn't wait to shower. Then she reached the second door on her left and pushed it open.

Inside was a guest room, clean and square and bright. Gone were the dark green walls of her high school years, replaced by a lighter, gentler green. Nature paintings had replaced the rock band posters and poorly done graffiti, and the black, wadded-up bedspread was now a soft grey that matched half-drawn curtains, and on the nightstand stood a vase with a single fresh chrysanthemum that hadn't dropped any petals yet. The grey carpet even looked freshly vacuumed. Clearly the woman downstairs had been prepared for their arrival, stressed out of her mind.

Hela nudged the door closed behind her. It was odd, seeing her old room done over, but she was too tired to be too sentimental or to wonder what had happened to the few things she'd left behind in her whirlwind move out or to decide if she even wanted any of it.

Instead, Hela tugged the curtains shut against the bright sun, peeled off her shoes and socks, and fell face first onto the bed.

She woke up to a dim room, and she rolled over and grabbed the clock off the nightstand.

7:18

Not exactly a nap. Hela set the clock down and sat up, feet on the carpet as she rubbed her eyes. She didn't feel super well rested, but at least she hadn't been sleeping in the back of a van in somebody's cornfield.

On the chair across the room lay a pile of folded clothes. Her clothes. Frowning, she got to her feet and picked up the top shirt. It was faintly warm, and when she held it to her nose it smelled like lavender. Frigga must have washed them while Hela was dead to the world.

She slid into clean clothes, checked her phones for messages, answered a couple of texts, and wandered downstairs in her bare feet.

In the living room, the TV was on, and Frigga and the boys were on the couch in a sea of blankets and sweats. Loki sprawled on the couch with his head on his mom's knee while she absently ran her fingers through his hair. Thor sat on her other side, not quite as close, but still sharing the same massive microfleece blanket. On the coffee table lay the remains of dinner—bits of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and bits of green veggies—and at their feet curled Fenris.

They looked so comfortable, like the rest of the world had fallen asleep around them and left a quiet space lit only by the blue glow of Mission Impossible movie. They looked content.

Hela paused in the doorway, reluctant to butt in. Instead, she snuck to the kitchen and dished herself some food from what was left on the counter. Frigga must not have wanted to wake her up, and she was grateful if still a little groggy.

She headed back for the stairs, but as she passed the living room, Frigga caught sight of her and waved. "Do you want to join us, Hela?"

She raised an eyebrow at her stepmother. "Hela?"

"The boys told you me you prefer that now. They've been talking nonstop since you arrived."

Her sons must have worn themselves out because they lounged on the couch in relative silence.

"I do, thanks." Hela made her way to a plush chair and settled in.

Thor chucked a blanket at her. "Helen sounds like a lame aunt."

"They call her Old Hell or High Water at work," Loki said. Maybe not so subdued.

Frigga looked down at him in surprise, but Hela snorted and took a bite of potatoes instead of answering. Fenris shuffled over to Hela's bare feet, and his body heat and fur engulfed her shins.

They watched TV movies until well into the night. Frigga dished everyone ice cream, and even Fenris got a little paper bowl of whipped cream. Hela caught herself zoning out around nine o'clock only to start awake and bump her dog in the ribs. He huffed but didn't get up, probably deep in dreams of rabbits and LA dog parks.

On the couch, Thor and Loki were fast asleep and snoring lightly, and Frigga was leaned back in the couch, her hands rested on her sons' shoulders as if to keep them in place. Rubbing her eyes, Hela eased her feet free of their canine shackles. Then she turned off the TV and walked through the first floor turning off all the lights except the front hall so they would have enough light to find their way to bed if they woke up at all. Then she and Fenris made their way upstairs where Hela showered and finally washed her hair, stealing a little of Frigga's shampoo because she sure wasn't going to go digging through her bags tonight.

Hot water. Finally. The Minnesota groundwater was softer than LA's pipes.

After putting on pajamas for the first time in what felt like a thousand years, Hela crawled into bed and let Fenris curl up at her feet.


	14. The One Where Hela Does an Unboxing

Hela was brushing her teeth in the guest bathroom the next morning, trying to get the feel of interstate grit out of her mouth. She changed out of her pajamas and her head hurt from sleeping so hard, but at least she hadn't fallen asleep on the couch like the rest of her family. Thor and Loki were kids—they'd slept in the back of a moving van and bounced right up the next day, but Frigga had to be miserable.

Then Frigga passed the open bathroom door with a box in her arms.

Hela glanced at herself in the mirror and mumbled around her toothbrush. "Or not."

All right. She'd bite.

She swished and spit and tossed her brush in the cup then followed her step-mom into the hall. Frigga pushed into the guest bedroom where Hela had been staying, and she set the box at the foot of the bed. Wiping her mouth on her wrist, the young woman crossed her arms leaned against the doorframe. Frigga straightened, dusted herself off, and turned to leave only to see her step-daughter and jumped. "Oh!" She put a hand over her heart. "Oh, Hela. There you are. I was just bringing down a box of your old things to see if you wanted them."

"My things?"

"Yes, just a few things you left behind when you moved out."

"Don't you have work?"

Frigga smiled. "It's Sunday."

Hela blinked and counted backward. They'd left on a Wednesday, parked in a cornfield Friday night. Yeah, Sunday was about right. She had to be in Chicago tomorrow to meet with the client, and she hadn't even started planning the trip home. Groaning, Hela rubbed her temple. "Do you mind if Fenris stays here for a few days? I'll pick him up on Wednesday."

"Of course not. There's no rush to be out of here you know."

Hela squatted down next to the box and rifled through the things. There were old band t-shirts, CDs, ratty posters, a couple of high school textbooks, knickknacks she'd long since forgotten about. "You saved all this?"

"Of course."

She dug to the bottom and found an old report card—straight A's.

"You were such a bright student." Frigga almost sounded proud as she sat down on the bed.

Hela squinted at the faded note at the bottom. "'Helen is a bright child but contentious and often provokes her peers deliberately.' Yeah, I was a real angel."

"You went through a lot of change, and I didn't help you nearly as much as I should have." Frigga's face fell, and her shoulders drooped, the confidence and grace she always exuded gone. "I'm sorry."

Hela stared at her stepmother in shock. What was she supposed to say to that? Then she felt herself getting angry, the familiar rage hardening over her like armor. Frigga thought she could just apologize, and that would overwrite years of distance? "You're sorry? Sorry?"

Frigga flinched.

A hundred memories sprang to mind—Hela screaming at Odin in the living room, in the parking lot, in the car. Odin bellowing back. Frigga on the periphery, trying to calm two hurricanes, never able to get close enough without the howling turning on her.

Anger dissolved into stomach-hollowing regret. Hela dropped onto the floor, one knee up and her legs at awkward angles. "I…" She covered her face with one hand. Something hot churned in her chest, worse than regret. "I sound just like him. I'm…"

"I know. And I'm so sorry, Hela. I should have been a better mother. I should have shown you how much I loved you, how much I wanted you." Frigga's eyes welled up, and her lip trembled. "I should have protected you better. You wanted to be loved so badly."

She looked around the room, trying to look at anything but the crying woman on her bed. She had wanted Frigga to love her, but she'd been so focused on winning Odin's approval, and when that failed, just his attention. Anger and shame boiled in her, and she wanted to scream or smash something, to run away from this conversation.

Then her gaze fell on the cardboard box full of forgotten things. Eight years. Eight years, Frigga had quietly packed school lunches, helped her get those straight A's, helped her dye and cut her hair—trying to bridge the canyon between them and never reaching far enough.

She had resented Frigga, Hela realized. For taking Odin's attention, for bringing bright, beloved Thor into their lives.

Hela didn't remember her own mother. Bridget had died young and tragic and occupied the same blurry space as one of Odin's early business contacts, and her father had been the permanent fixture of her childhood. Hela was Odin's daughter, first, last, and always. She might as well have lived on Mars for the void that created around her, one that not even Frigga with all her love could have crossed.

Something hot streaked down Hela's cheek, and she touched her face. Was she crying? She hadn't cried in… she couldn't remember.

Frigga moved from the bed to kneel beside Hela and laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. "I should have fought harder for you. I'm so sorry, and I don't expect you to forgive me…"

Hela threw her arms around her stepmother's neck and clenched her teeth. "Shut up. Shut up, or I cry, and then I'll really hate you."

Frigga rocked back in surprise then hugged Hela back and, shaking, buried her face in her stepdaughter's shoulder. They sat on the carpet until the tears stopped coming, then Hela pulled back and wiped her face on her wrist. "I'm still mad."

Frigga nodded and wiped her own eyes.

"But I'd… I'd like to be friends. If you want."

Frigga gave a laugh-sob and smiled. "I do. I do want that."

Hela looked down at her hands. Under her nails was the faintest remain of green spray paint. "Me and Dad are exactly the same, aren't we?"

Is this what Loki felt like, when he said Odin hated him?

Frigga laid a hand on Hela's wrist. "You're very similar. But I think you've been your own person for a long time."

Hela took a deep breath. She'd emoted more in the past twenty minutes than she had in a year, and that was enough of that. She gestured back to the box. Most of it was garbage, she'd never missed it, but she found herself clearing her throat to get rid of the lump in her throat. "Hmm, how many boxes do you have?"

Frigga blinked in surprise, then ran her hands over her hand and straightened her shirt as if physically pulling herself together. "There's one more. You were pretty thorough."

"Really? I don't believe that." She must have left so much junk behind when she moved out in a whirlwind of adrenaline. If someone had all this in her condo, she probably would have thrown it out.

Frigga retrieved the other box, full of the same. Then bright ringtone went off across the hall, and she started. "I'm sorry, that's mine. Do you mind if…"

"No. Go, it's probably important."

Frigga excused herself, and Hela turned back to her stuff. How was she supposed to get all this stuff home? None of it was especially valuable or sentimental, but Frigga had saved it for years, and after the conversation they'd just had, it didn't feel right to toss it. This family was doing things to her, and she still wasn't sure how she was going to land. The shirts she rolled up and stuffed in her suitcase, but the CDs she carried downstairs to the living room.

"Hey, Thor?"

A small hand and pajamaed arm poked out over the couch and pointed. "He's in the kitchen."

"Thanks, kid."

In the kitchen Thor stood with his head half in the fridge, toast hanging out of his mouth, a jean jacket and tennis shoes on, phone in one hand.

Hela set the stack of DVDs down on the counter with a loud rattle. "Where are you going?"

He glanced over one shoulder and took the toast out of his mouth. "Out."

She leaned against the counter and raised one eyebrow.

"Jane and the guys are coming to pick me up."

She snorted. "Your friends can drive?"

"Jane's got her permit."

"I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean she can have a bunch of people in the car."

Thor rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, Mom. We're biking to Val's."

Hela frowned. "Val?"

"Yeah. She's pretty cool. Babysits for Loki sometimes when I've got a hockey game."

"And she can drive?"

"Yeah, she's like 20 something?" He took another big bite of toast. "Teaches boxing. She's cool."

Boxing ring? Hela blinked as high school memories rushed back. "Val? As in The Valkyrie? As in Brunhild Johnson?"

"Yeah. You know her?"

They'd been friends in college or at least roommates. Brunhild was a poster child—champion boxer "Valkyrie" who worked weekends at her dad's boxing ring, honors students, steady girlfriend. She and Hela had taken a lot of the same business classes, studied together, but once Brunhild and Astrid started going steady and moved off campus, they'd fallen out of touch. "Val" had taken over the family business after all.

Thor, oblivious to his half-sister's journey down memory lane, shut the fridge and ambled over the to counter. "What are these?" He picked up one of the CD cases and cracked it open. "The Black Parade? You really were an emo kid."

"I mean if you don't want them." She plucked it out of his hand and gave him a disinterested look that was more put on than genuine.

"I didn't say that." He grabbed for it, and she jerked it up out of reach. She wouldn't be able to do that much longer; had he grown since she picked him off the curb in Phoenix.

Instead of jumping for it, he shot her a dirty look. "You're the worst."

Hela pushed the pile towards him. "I have to be in Chicago tomorrow, so you'll be rid of me soon enough."

Thor them up and shrugged. "I don't know, Loki likes having you around."

Hela raised an eyebrow, but Thor stuffed the rest of the toast in his mouth and checked his phone. "'Kay, they're here. Seeya."

And then he was gone, screen door banging at his heels. Hela glanced out the window, and in the driveway was a small army of kids on bikes.

Loki padded up behind her with Fenris clicking long nails beside him. He still had bedhead from sleeping on the couch.

"You didn't want to go?" she asked.

"Nah." He scratched Fenris' ears. "You wanna make pancakes?"

She glanced at her watch. It was well past an acceptable breakfast time, but they hadn't exactly been on a strict routine for the past week. "I have to buy my plane ticket."

Loki frowned. "You're leaving?"

"My meeting. Or did you already forget?"

"No, I'm not dumb."

"You know, it would be a real hassle for me to fly Fenris to Chicago and back. Will you keep him out of trouble until I get back?"

His eyes lit up, and he stuck out his chin and pulled himself up to his full height, which had to be all of four-foot-nothing. "Uh-huh. I'll feed him and take him for walks, and he can sleep on my bed."

"Hmm, I'm sure he'd love that. It's a pretty grown-up responsibility, you know."

"I can follow a recipe all by myself."

"Last time you cooked, you set my apartment on fire."

"Hey!"

"I'm teasing, kid. I know you'll take good care of my dog. Make your pancakes then; I'll supervise."

Loki muttered under his breath but gathered ingredients out of the cabinets, knocking into and maneuvering around Fenris at every step, ignoring the perfectly good stepstool by the sink and crawling up onto the counters to get what he wanted. Fenris was tall enough to lay his chin on the counter, so Loki ended up kneeling on a chair at the island, bowl cradled in his arms, to keep the chocolate chip batter out of reach.

Hela bought her tickets there and back and booked a hotel room from her phone, then stepped in just in time to do the actual griddle work.

Loki crossed his arms on the counter and rested his chin on them. "I heard you and Mom yelling."

Hela paused, spatula hovering over a bubbling cake. She hadn't thought they were yelling, but Loki was an attentive kid. She flipped the pancake. Golden. "Not much gets past you, huh?"

He shook his head and watched her flip pancakes until there was a steaming pile on a plate.

"Got any bacon?"

He went to the fridge and came back with a small pack that Hela tossed into the same pan. It crackled and popped.

"I don't want you to go."

"Yeah? Well, we never did get to Disneyland. Maybe… maybe you guys can come to see me."

Loki perked up. "Really?"

"Yeah. If your mom is down for it."

"That would be cool."

A knock came at the front door. Hela reached to turn the stove off, but Loki was already halfway to the front hall with Fenris at his heels. Unembarrassed of his dinosaur pajamas and bed head, he threw open the door. "Oh hi, Mr. Heimdall."

"Good morning, Loki. Is your mother available?"

"She's upstairs, but you can come in." He opened the door wider and in came Heimdall, wearing a sharp suit and carrying a briefcase the same as he had when he worked at Asgard, Inc. He had a beard now and looked more relaxed than she had ever seen him. He looked around and spied Hela in the kitchen.

"Good morning. I'm just here to drop off some paperwork."

She nodded and slid the bacon out of the pan onto some paper towels. "Frigga's upstairs, but you're welcome to join us for brunch." She glanced at the clock. "Or maybe just lunch at this point."

"Thank you. I think I will."

Loki set the breakfast nook table with four places and laid one plate on the floor near his chair. Hela set out the food, some syrup, and some grapes she'd found in the fridge.

"I'm glad you made the drive safe and sound." Heimdall set his briefcase on the counter and took a seat. As a child, she'd never been able to sneak up on him, and he always seemed to catch her doing exactly what she wasn't supposed to be doing. She'd been convinced the man was psychic. It's probably what made him the best private attorney in the state after he quit from Asgard, Inc.

"We all made it alive. Hey, Loki, go tell your mom food's ready."

"Okay." He sprinted off, thundering up the stairs.

Hela filled some glasses with ice water and set them on the table. "Thanks for what you've done for Frigga and the kids."

"Your mother's a good woman. You're not so bad yourself when you chose to be."

She laughed. "Unfortunately, being an asshole is a genetic trait."

"Hmm. I'm not sure an asshole would have driven her brothers across the country just to ease their mother's mind."

She shrugged. "They're not bad kids."

"No. No, they're not. I know it's not really any of my business, but how much longer are they going to be strung along?"

"Without going into detail, it shouldn't be much longer. Your parents are both stubborn people, but given everything that's happened, I think the conclusion is pretty clear."

Then Loki returned with his mom in tow. The four of them dished up the meal, and if Loki snuck a pancake and a strip of bacon onto the plate on the floor for Fenris, Hela didn't say anything.


	15. The One Where The Story Ends

Hela came home to a dark apartment. The only light came from the city skyline out the window and the light over the kitchen sink. The woman in the window seat had gotten up twice on the three-hour flight and hacked into her own open hand, and all the work emails in the world couldn't distract Hela from everything happening in a hermetically-sealed germ tube. How on earth did she feel more disgusting after one flight than she had after three days in a second-hand van?

Hela flicked on the light over the dining table and leaned against the door frame to peel off her shoes while Fenris bounced in place, waiting to run laps around the apartment. He'd been cooped up all day. She'd have to take him to the dog park some night to make up for it. Then his ears went back, and he growled.

"What's wrong, boy?"

He stared intently at the still dark living room.

"Amanda?"

Hackles raised, Fenris growled at the living room, and Hela leaned over the kitchen counter. She grabbed a knife out of the knife block but kept a firm grip on Fenris' leash in case Amanda was back with a friend. Though her roommate usually texted a heads up about these things.

This was supposed to be a secure building, damn it. She didn't want to fight off some freak while she was only wearing one shoe.

The couch creaked, and a bearded old man sat up, blinking.

"Shit!" Hela hurled the knife, and then it was quivering in the wall beside the TV.

"Helen! What the hell?" Odin hauled himself to his feet.

Dad? Standing in her apartment? How on earth-"How the hell did you get in my house?"

Not waiting for the answer, Hela grabbed Fenris' collar and hauled him to the balcony and nudged him outside. "Stay here. Good boy."

He whined but didn't try to push back inside. She shut the sliding door, and he stood close to the glass, glowering at Odin. Hela whirled on the old man who had invaded her home. He was entirely grey now, short grey beard, grey hair, grey suit. He glanced at the steak carver in the wall. "Is this how you greet guests, by throwing cutlery at them?"

"You're lucky I missed." If she felt bad, he didn't need to see it. She crossed her arms and shifted all her weight to one foot. "How did you get in here?"

"Your delightful roommate let me in."

Amanda.

"When I told her I was your father, she did a little Facebook searching and was more than happy to oblige."

Hela grunted. At least there'd been some thought. Had she not expressed She turned her back on him and went to the kitchen to get herself a drink. "I suppose it's not worth asking how you know where I live in the first place."

"You think I'd let my daughter move halfway across the country without knowing if she's all right?"

"Oh, right, because you're so concerned about your kids." She threw open the fridge and grabbed one of Amanda's fruit smoothie drinks. Something to keep her hands occupied.

"I really don't think—"

"Yeah, no shit." She slammed the fridge closed. "If you cared about those kids, you'd let them stay with Frigga."

"Helen…" The warning tone that she was pushing too far.

Hela flinched, hard. Then she gritted her teeth. "No, you know what? You act like you always know what's best for everybody, but that's fine. I've made a good life for myself without your help. But those kids? They love you, which is insane, but they do. A lot. But you're doing a bang-up job of that too."

"What I do with my children is none of your business."

"You made it my business when you abandoned those boys in Phoenix! You think you can come in here and yell at me, after what I did for your kids? Why are you even here? What do you want?"

"I've come to set things right." Odin dug around inside his jacket produced a checkbook from inside his jacket. "How much do I owe you?"

"You really are the worst." She curled her lips back in disdain. "I don't want your money."

"Then what do you want, Helen?"

"What do I want? I want you to treat those kids like they're more important than some pawns in a business deal. I want you out of my house. I want you to get my damned name right!"

He looked at her solemnly, the same cold, stoic look he had right before their fights. "You haven't changed, I see. You never listened to anyone."

Hela barked a laugh. "Really? Wonder where I learned that."

"You are a stubborn, selfish, destructive child."

"And you are an old man and fool!"

He swayed on his feet, and Hela paused in her tirade. Odin sat down hard, and the way the light from the living room hit his bowed head made him look like he'd aged ten years. He was, what, sixty-five?

"You're right."

Shit. Shit, she'd finally killed him.

Hela blinked and set her bottle down on the counter. Should she call an ambulance? Should she all Frigga? But Odin gestured to the seat beside him, cutting off her thoughts. "Sit down. I'm tired of this fighting."

She glanced at Fenris, who was staring intently at the old man. She grabbed her drink then sat down on the far end of the couch. Wary.

"I didn't come here to slog through the past. There have been enough battles."

Hela twisted the smoothie cap off without breaking eye contact. Maybe rage wasn't the right way to approach this, but she had to work to keep the suspicion out of her face. She didn't want to sit and listen to him, but she had thrown a knife at him, so maybe she owed him a few minutes.

"I spoke with the boys this afternoon. Loki expressed some… concerns about the proposed custody arrangement."

Her eyes narrowed. Odin leaned back, and she knew he was surprised even if his face didn't show it. "You really do care about them."

"I'm not a monster." Hela took a swig of the smoothie and grimaced at the sweetness.

"I always imagined that you resented them." When she just stared at him, Odin continued. "After more consideration, I've decided to give custody over to Frigga. You were… not entirely wrong about the situation. It's been hard on us all."

Hela blinked. This had gone… differently than she expected.

"They seem very fond of you for having known you so little."

"They're good kids."

"Yes." With a distant look on his face, Odin rubbed his right knee. Wherever he had gone in his memories, Hela wasn't about to follow him. But then he stood. "I should leave you. Goodbye, Hela."

With that, Odin left for his hotel. Hela shut the door behind him and leaned against it, staring into space until Fenris whined outside. Shaken from her reverie, she rubbed her face and opened the sliding door. Fenris combed over the living room with his nose, sniffing every inch of where Odin had sat before running room to room to check for him. Satisfied, he followed Hela to the bathroom where she rinsed off the travel reek and changed into her pajamas. Then she fell face first onto her bed.

"Uuuggghhh."

A weird knot rested behind her sternum. It had been there a lot lately, and she wasn't sure she had the words to describe everything churning around in it. She should have been angry—would have. Even a month ago, she would have been all rage and pain and sharp edges. Those boys had done something to her. Maybe she was tired of being angry.

Bzz Bzz

She groaned louder and slapped at the nightstand a few times before finding her phone and holding it to her face, blinking against the brightness setting. Loki. It was two in the morning in Minnesota, why was he calling her?

She answered. "Hey, kid."

"Hi, Hela." She could hear him breathing loudly into the phone like there was something over his head. Was he under a blanket?

When he didn't say anything else, she prompted him. "Isn't it a little late for you to be making phone calls?"

"I miss you."

"I miss you too." She rolled onto her back and rubbed her eyes. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah. Is Fenris okay?"

"Oh yeah. He did all right on the plane." She snapped a quick picture of the dog lying belly up on the rug, tongue flopped out of his head, and sent it to Loki. "Thanks for taking care of him while I was in Chicago."

Loki fell quiet again, but his breathing came loudly through the phone.

"I think you need to go to bed, kid. I'll talk—"

"Dad called today. While you were on the plane."

Hela groaned and sat upright, and Fenris bolted to his feet, ears raised. Waving a hand to calm him, she took a deep breath before replying: "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Should she tell him that he had stopped by her apartment? No, that didn't seem right. Should she tell him what Odin said about the custody battle? Did he already know? "Did you talk to your mom about it?"

Frigga would know what to say. Hell, she had probably been there and already eviscerated her ex-husband for what he put the boys through. Odin's main strategy for dealing with problems had always been to cover them up. For a man who'd built an empire on aggressive business deals, she was surprised he'd conceded at all. But then she remembered him on the couch—old, thinning at the edges, entirely grey. Maybe he was tired too.

Loki's voice cut into her thoughts. "Yeah, Mom talked to him too. It was on speakerphone."

If he had talked to Frigga, why was he calling her? "Do you want to talk to me about it?"

More breathing and some rustling came over the phone. He was definitely hiding under something and getting tangled in it. "He said he was sorry," Loki whispered.

Loki whispered.

Hela inhaled. "That's good."

"I told him I want to stay with Mom."

Hela passed a hand over her eyes. Had she misjudged the old man after all? Maybe he wasn't completely made of self-interested stone. "I suppose you think you're brave now."

"Thor cried after. He thinks I didn't see."

That made the hideous knot in her chest worse. Shit. "Thor's... been through a lot. You both have."

On the Minnesota end of the call, a door creaked. "Loki?"

He gasped. Sounds of the phone tumbling came through the line. Frigga must have heard him talking because she said, "Honey? Are you still awake?"

"I can't sleep."

"You've had a big couple days, but try for me?"

"Okay."

Creaking hardwood, the sound of a kiss. "Good night, sweetheart."

"Night, Mom."

The door creaked again followed by more shuffling and Loki's breathing. They sat in silence for a long time before the door creaked again and a muffled psst came through the phone. More shuffling.

"Thor?"

"I can hear you talking through the wall."

"Oh."

"Is it Hela?"

"Hey, Thor," she said.

A mattress creaked over quiet arguing, and Hela sat patiently while they sorted themselves out.

"I wanna talk to her too."

"I'm sitting here."

"Then move over, stupid."

"You're stupid. You shoulda brought your own pillow."

"You have, like, seven pillows."

But eventually they figured it out, and Loki was breathing into the phone from a little further away. "Thanks for not ratting me out," he whispered.

Hela realized she'd been clenching her jaw and let it relax.

"When are you gonna come see us?" Thor asked.

"Yeah, I miss you," said Loki.

Hela smiled. "It's gonna be a little while, guys." She'd scramble to catch up with work for a while, but she still had a lot of vacation she hadn't touched, even with their cross-country drive. "But I'll see you again soon."

Loki huffed. "Like five minutes soon? Or soon you'll be grown up soon?"

"Not quite that long."

"If we come see you, can we get In-N-Out again?"

"Hmm." Hela rubbed at one eye. "Assuming your mother ever lets you leave the state again, I think we can swing that."

"And Disneyland?"

"Don't push your luck." The boys laughed, and a small smile played at Hela's lips. "You kids should get some sleep."

"Okay. G'night, Hela," they chorused.

"Good night, boys."

The call ended, and Hela eased back onto her pillow. Fenris whined and set his heavy head on her bed, nose against her thigh. Sighing, she patted the covers. "Oh, all right. As long as I'm being a pushover."

He hopped up onto the bed and curled into her side, a hairy hot water bottle that took up half the mattress. She curled up on her side and ran her hands down his flank. "Don't get used to it."

Fenris snorted.

"No. No, I think we're all gonna be okay after all."

The End


End file.
